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“You stop that! This is a City of Refuge.” — Page 34. 


TOGGLES 

AN OUTDOOR BOY 


BY 

FREDERICK F. HALL 


ILLUSTRATED BY CHARLES COPELAKD 



BOSTON 

LOTHROP. LEE & SHEPARD CO. 


Published, August, 1918 



Copyright, 1918 

By Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Co. 
All rights reserved 


Toggles 


florwoob Press 

BERWICK & SMITH 00. 

NORWOOD, MASS. 

U. 8. A. 


OCT 23 1918 


©CU506291 


ato 

“PECIOUSNESS” AND “HAPPY FACE” 


OTHERWISE MURIEL AND GRACE HALL 

My Dear Daughters: 

When I first began writing about Toggles, 
you asked me a great many times whether my 
Toggles was a really, truly boy or whether, like 
your “Maddie Gilbert , : ” he was a “fictitious 
character.” 

Perhaps some other little folks may want to 
know the same thing, and so may be I better 
say right here, the very first thing in the book, 
that, excepting you two and your small cousins 
across the street, there is not a child in the whole 
world who is so real to me as Toggles is. 

Your loving father, 

Frederick F. Hall. 

En route to France with 
the Army Y.M.C.A., 

April, 1918. 







CONTENTS 


CHAPTER 

I 

How Toggles Came to the Farm . 

PAGE 
. 11 

II 

The Kitten that Never Was Found 

. 20 

III 

The City of Refuge 

. 28 

IV 

The House that Toggles Built . 

. 40 

Y 

The Farm at War 

. 50 

YI 

The Beaker’s Baby ..... 

. 61 

VII 

Toggles and the Bees . 

. 71 

VIII 

Two Boys Who Did Things Over . 

. 79 

IX 

Butterflies and Boys .... 

. 86 

X 

Lost in the Woods 

. 95 

XI 

Mabel’s Party v . 

. 108 

XII 

The Smile-Holes ..... 

. 122 

XIII 

The Downtrodden City .... 

. 131 

XIV 

The “Why” of the Weeds . . 

. 141 

XV 

The Spinners 

. 150 

XVI 

The “Promissory” Birthday . . 

. 159 

XVII 

The Weed that Got Started . . 

. 169 

XVIII 

The Rescue of Zenobia .... 

. 180 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER PACE 

XIX Toggles Uses His Forgetter . . . 183 

XX The Things God Hid 197 

XXI Mabel’s Trouble 208 

XXII Toggles Borrows a Birthday . . . 218 


XXIII The Man With the Green Tin Box . 228 
XXIY The Saved-Up Sunshine .... 238 
XXV The Public Benefactors .... 247 


ILLUSTRATIONS 


“You stop that! This is a City of Refuge” 

(Page 34) Frontispiece v'' 


FACING 

PAGE 

The little tenant began to sing as only a 


bluebird can 


48 


/ 


“Don’t shoot. We’ll take him prisoner” . 
“There he comes again !” 




“What’S the matter with Mabel and Tog- 
gles? They’re all right!” .... 120 

“I’m marshal,” said Toggles, showing his star 234 



TOGGLES 

AN OUTDOOR BOY 
CHAPTER I 

HOW TOGGLES CAME TO THE FARM 

E VERYBODY called him “Tog- 
gle's,’ 9 and so shall we. It does 
not matter in the least what his real 
name was. It is enough to know that 
he was a very active little boy of seven. 

It was the first really warm day of 
spring, and Toggles went out to climb a 
tree in the front yard. It was the first 
tree he had climbed that year and you 
might have thought he would be out of 
11 


12 


TOGGLES 


practice but be did not seem to notice 
it. When be was almost to tbe top and 
wondering if be dared to go one branch 
bigber the front door opened and — he 
could hardly believe bis eyes. 

Miss Curtis, tbe lady in tbe white cap 
and tbe blue and white striped dress, 
who bad been with them so many weeks, 
came first but with her was another 
lady in tbe wheel-chair that they bad 
borrowed only tbe day before. Tbe 
other lady was little and pale ; it looked 
as if a sudden gust of wind might blow 
her quite away; one who bad seen her 
a year ago might not have known her 
now but Toggles knew her at once. 

“ Mother!” be shouted. 

Then he almost bit bis tongue off, for 
be remembered, what be bad thought be 


TOGGLES CAME TO THE FARM 13 

never again could forget, that mother 
must not be startled; there was no tell- 
ing how frightened she might be to see 
him away up in the top of that tree and, 
just as fast as he could, he clambered 
down. 

He was not in time to help her to the 
corner where there was the least wind 
and the most sunshine. His little sister 
Mabel did that, but he helped Miss Cur- 
tis tuck in the steamer-rugs and ran 
into the house to get the footstool and 
met Mabel, bringing it in her two 
chubby hands. Then they sat down, 
one on each side of the footstool and 
looked up into the dear face in which 
only the smile was all that it had been. 

“Oh, Mother!” exclaimed Toggles. 
“Isn’t it good that you’re better 


14 


TOGGLES 


“ Isn’t it, though?” echoed Mabel. 

And Miss Curtis said, “We’re very 
proud of her.” 

Mother reached out and patted one 
small head and then the other. After 
that she lay back in the wheel-chair as 
if she were already a little tired. 

“Don’t t’ings jes’ smell good?” de- 
manded Mabel. 

“And look at the buds on the trees,” 
chortled Toggles, “they’re swelling up 
till they’re ’most ready to bust — burst, 
I mean.” 

Al man turned the corner and Toggles 
and Mabel raced down the street to meet 
him. When he turned in at the gate he 
had Toggles under one arm and Mabel 
under the other. 

“My! But it’s good to see you get- 


TOGGLES CAME TO TEE FARM 15 

ting better !” he said as he stooped to 
kiss the lady in the wheel-chair. 

“Yes,” she answered, “but I’m a 
little tired now. I think 111 let you 
take me in.” 

So he picked her up in his arms, just 
as if she had been Toggles or Mabel, and 
carried her into the house and laid her 
on the couch. 

That afternoon the doctor came, as 
he did every day. For a while he had 
come oftener. 

“You say she sat up a little while this 
morning?” he said to Toggles ’s father. 

“Yes,” he answered. “Miss Curtis 
had her out on the porch when I came 
home to lunch. It was good to see her 
so much better.” 

The doctor drew his chair nearer and 


16 


TOGGLES 


they talked long and seriously in voices 
so low that Toggles, who was out in the 
other room, could not catch a word. 
Not that he would have tried to hear 
what was not meant for him; he knew 
that would not have been right, but he 
could not have heard, anyway; for one 
thing he was too busy helping Mabel to 
build an opera-house out of her stone 
blocks. 

Finally they heard the doctor say : 

“Yes. That, it seems to me, would 
be the best place. But I would not 
think of having her come home before 
the first of October, and not even then 
unless she is much improved. If noth- 
ing unfavorable happens, she ought to 
be able to make the trip next week. 
Miss Curtis of course would go with her 


TOGGLES CAME TO THE FARM 17 

but it might not be necessary for her to 
remain long.” 

After the doctor had gone, Father 
called them into the other room, closed 
the door and took one on each knee. 

“How would you like it,” he asked, 
“to go to Grandpa’s and stay all sum- 
mer?” 

He did not have to wait for an an- 
swer. Both of them leaped down and 
started a war-dance, or would have 
started one, only they remembered in 
time that children must be very quiet 
in a house where a mother is sick. 

“When would we start?” Toggles 
whispered. 

“Next Tuesday, I think,” said 
Father. 

There was a silent clapping of hands 


18 


TOGGLES 


and some wriggles that meant a delight 
too deep for words. 

“We shall have to be very careful of 
Mother on the way,” Father went on, 
“and at Grandpa’s you will have to see 
that she eats plenty, and sleeps a great 
deal, and is out of doors enough but not 
too much, and that nothing ever hap- 
pens to worry her, no quarrels between 
children or anything like that. It’s a 
great responsibility you will have.” 

“But Grandpa and Grandma will be 
there?” exclaimed Toggles. 

“Oh, yes — ” 

“And you’ll be there?” piped Mabel. 

“No,” answered Father. “I shall 
come home as soon as Mother is safely 
at Grandpa’s. Some one, you know, 
will have to run the store.” 


TOGGLES CAME TO TEE FARM 19 


And that explains why in this book 
you will find so little about Toggles ’s 
father. Some people might even think 
that Toggles did not have any father 
but, my! what a mistake. Of course 
he had a father, two hundred and eleven 
pounds of one, and next to your own 
father, probably the best one in the 
world. 


CHAPTER II 


THE KITTEN THAT NEVEK WAS FOUND 

I P there was excitement at Toggles’s 
home when the plan was made, you 
may be sure that there was also excite- 
ment at the farm when the first letter 
came telling about it and really I doubt 
if any one could have told which 
were happier, Toggles and Mabel, or 
Grandpa and Grandma. It did not 
seem to one of them that they could 
wait for the day to come but it did at 
last and Grandpa drove down to the 
station and brought them home and 
Mother was taken straight up-stairs to 
bed and there was a happy afternoon 
20 


TEE KITTEN 


21 


of questions and answers and racing 
here and there and not until the next 
morning, when they had had breakfast, 
and had run out into the road, to wave 
good-by to Father, did Toggles and Ma- 
bel have time to begin really exploring 
the farm. 

How many things there were to see ! 
First the house itself, with the big cel- 
lar and the big attic, though for that 
they could wait until a rainy day ; then 
the great cow-barn, with the whole up- 
per part filled with the “ happy hills of 
hay” that Toggles had read of in one 
of his books but had never rolled and 
tumbled in before, and the horse-barn, 
too, and the carriage-house, and the 
corn-crib, and the tool-shed, and the 
work-shop, and the pig-pen, and the 


22 


TOGGLES 


granary, and the windmill, and the 
spring-house, and — Well, it seemed 
as if there was simply no end of places 
and that not even counting the orchard, 
the meadow, the deep — But, what am 
I talking about? Grandpa’s woods 
were not deep, and especially they were 
not tangled nor wild; they had been 
grazed in for years by cattle, and that, 
as Toggles learned later, makes a great 
difference with woods. 

Toggles had to climb into the seat of 
the disk-harrow, and the mower, and 
the tedder, and the horse-rake. He 
asked poor Chris about more things 
than Chris could possibly give English 
names for and as for Grandpa he finally 
put on his bee-veil and went down into 
the bee-yard where as yet Toggles was 


TEE KITTEN 


23 


a bit afraid to follow. Not that 
Grandpa was trying to get away from 
Toggles ’s questions though. It would 
have been quite unlike him to do that, 
but the bees really needed attention. 

Toggles looked, and listened, and 
climbed, and prowled, and investigated 
in all sorts of places, until he heard the 
kitten. Then he hunted for a half-hour 
until he made up his mind that, bees or 
no bees, he must have help. So, al- 
though he could not keep from dodging 
when anything buzzed too near his head, 
he walked right down into the bee yard 
and stopped not far from the hive on 
which Grandpa was working. 

“ Grandpa,’ ’ he said, “I guess you’ll 
have to come and help me. There’s a 
little cat up in the barn somewhere and 


24 


TOGGLES 


it keeps crying harder and harder, and 
I can’t find it.” 

Grandpa was hard at work but he put 
the cover on the hive, took off his bee- 
veil and came with Toggles at once. 

“Well, that’s strange,” he said. “I 
didn’t know Zenobia had any kittens.” 

“I didn’t either,” answered Toggles. 
(He had met Zenobia the night before.) 
“And I don’t know where this one came 
from. But it’s there, and it’s crying 
just dreadful.” 

They walked up past the lilacs to the 
big barn and looked all about, every- 
where. But no trace of a kitten ! 

“Did it sound as if it was inside of 
the barnT’ asked Grandpa. 

“I couldn’t just tell,” said Toggles; 
“may be it was inside.” 


TEE KITTEN 


25 


So they looked inside, but there was 
no cat there and they could hear no cry- 
ing. 

“You’re sure you heard it?” asked 
Grandpa. 

“Oh, I’m sure,” said Toggles. “It 
was just as plain, and the kitten felt 
very bad.” 

“Perhaps it was in the carriage- 
house,” suggested Grandpa. 

But it was not outside of the carriage- 
house, nor inside, and when, to make 
sure, Toggles went down on his little 
stomach and crawled under, where it 
was all dark and cool, there was no kit- 
ten there, either. 

“It’s very strange,” he said, as they 
walked back beneath the apple-trees to 
the bee yard. “I know I heard it. 


26 


TOGGLES 


May be though its mama came and 
found it.” 

Grandpa did not say anything and, 
just at that moment, right out of the 
tree above their heads, came the same 
pitiful, beseeching call, of a very little 
cat in sorest trouble. 

“ There!” quickly exclaimed Toggles. 
“ There it is again. Why — Where is 
it, Grandpa?” 

Grandpa did not answer but he 
pointed with his finger and Toggles 
looked up with all his eyes at a dark 
slate-colored bird with a black cap. 

“That?” he whispered. 

Grandpa nodded. 

“Why—” 

And just then the bird gave the same 
pitiful low call again, and then another 


TEE KITTEN 


27 


that was not at all like a kitten’s, and, 
with a flirt of his tail as if he were 
laughing at them, flew off as fast as his 
wings could carry him. 

“What was it?” asked Toggles, when 
the bird was lost among the leaves. 

“That was a cat-bird,” Grandpa an- 
swered. 

“Well,” said Toggles, as Grandpa 
laughed and put on his bee-veil once 
more, “I thought I knew a good deal 
about birds but that is the first time I 
ever knew there was a bird that played 
jokes on people. I think,” he added, 
“that Mother would be interested in 
that story. Don’t you?” 

Grandpa agreed that she would, and 
that night Mother heard all about The 
Kitten that Never was Found. 


CHAPTER III 

THE CITY OF REFUGE 

E VERY morning, right after break- 
fast, the whole family would go 
up to Mother’s room and Toggles would 
get the big Bible and lay it in Grandpa’s 
lap and Grandpa would read a chapter 
and then there would be the prayer. 
Usually Toggles understood pretty well 
what Grandpa read about but one morn- 
ing there was something that puzzled 
him. So, later in the day, when he 
found Grandpa fixing a piece of harness 
in the tool-house he went in and sat 
down on a box near him. 


28 


THE CITY OF REFUGE 


29 


“ Grandpa,” he demanded, “what is a 
City of Refuge ?” 

And Grandpa told him about the 
safety cities of the olden time, where 
one who had done wrong without mean- 
ing to might go and be sheltered from 
his enemies. 

“Do they have them now?” asked 
Toggles. 

“Not that kind,” answered Grandpa. 

“Why not?” demanded Toggles. 

Grandpa explained that men know 
more now than they used to. Now, 
when a man does wrong, his neighbors 
do not try to kill him; they let the law 
decide whether he should be punished 
or not, and so such cities are not needed. 
Toggles saw that it was better, and still 
he could not help wishing that just one 


30 


TOGGLES 


had been left, for he would have liked 
to see it. Then he remembered just 
how Grandpa had answered his first 
question and he asked another. 

“ Grandpa,’ ’ he inquired, “if they 
don’t have that kind of cities of refuge, 
what kind do they have?” 

“Refuges for animals,” answered 
Grandpa, “and we need a great many 
more. Men are learning to be kinder 
to each other but they have not yet 
learned to be nearly kind enough to ani- 
mals. Now, birds eat cherries — ” 
“And strawberries,” added Toggles. 
“Yes and they dig up corn but they 
don’t mean to do harm and those are 
not things that they ought to be killed 
for. Down in the pasture yesterday I 


TEE CITY OF REFUGE 


31 


found a robin that some one had shot 
and it made me feel bad.” 

It made Toggles feel bad, too, and that 
night he told his mother all about his 
talk with Grandpa, and after he had 
said his prayers, and was tucked away 
in bed, she had Miss Curtis find and 
read Longfellow’s poem about “The 
Birds of Killingworth” to him and to 
Mabel, and next morning Toggles woke 
with a brand-new idea. 

“Grandpa,” he exclaimed, as soon as 
he was down-stairs. “Why couldn’t 
we make this farm a City of Refuge for 
the birds?” 

“I declare!” said Grandpa. “I be- 
lieve we could.” 

All through breakfast they planned 


32 


TOGGLES 


and arranged. Grandpa was to be 
mayor of the city and Toggles was to 
be marshal to carry out his orders. 
Grandma was to be food commissioner, 
because she often fed the birds; and 
Mother, because at home she always had 
a shallow dish beside the pump for the 
birds to bathe in, was superintendent of 
water-works, with Mabel as assistant, 
for of course Mother could not look 
after it herself. Chris was to be the 
militia, who might be called out if ever 
the city were threatened with war. 

Right after breakfast, Toggles and 
Grandpa went to work on some signs 
and by night there were four, nailed up 
in different places and all reading : 

TRESPASS ALL YOU WANT TO 

BUT DON’T HARM THE BIRDS. 


TEE CITY OF REFUGE 33 

There was great fun that day and 
the next and the next, for grandma 
made Toggles a marshal’s star and 
Toggles went all over the farm to see 
that every creature kept the new law. 
But on the fourth day came an adven- 
ture. 

He was just crawling under the fence 
that separated the woods from the 
lower pasture when something went 
“spat” in the leaves above his head 
and a woodpecker shot past, flying for 
his life. Toggles’ heart leaped into his 
mouth, for through the tangle of under- 
brush he caught sight of bare feet and 
a torn straw hat. 

He was frightened, just a little, but 
it was no time for a marshal to hesitate, 
and his voice rang out clear and strong. 


34 


TOGGLES 


“Hey, there !” he called, just as 
Grandpa did sometimes to the cows. 
“You stop that! This is a City of 
Kefuge.” 

The other boy had not known any one 
was near and he was a bit frightened, 
too, but when he saw it was only Tog- 
gles he stopped and slipped another 
stone into his sling-shot. 

“I don’t have to,” he said. 

That was no way to talk to a mar- 
shal and Toggles was pretty angry. 
This was his grandpa’s farm, the new 
law was on his side, and the other boy 
had no business here. He wanted to 
walk right up to him and hit him hard, 
only he knew his mother did not ap- 
prove of boys fighting. He could not 
call out the njilitia, for the militia was 


THE CITY OF REFUGE 


35 


at work with the cultivator away on the 
other side of the farm. Something 
must be done, though, and quickly, for 
the other boy was looking around for 
another bird and Toggles had just 
doubled up his fists and taken a step 
forward when, all in a flash, there came 
an idea a great deal better than either 
the militia or fighting. 

“Say,” he exclaimed, “you can’t hit 
that tree.” 

“I ain’t shootin’ trees,” said the 
other boy. 

“ ’Cause you can’t hit ’em,” said 
Toggles. 

“Yes, I can,” was the answer. 

“Try it.” 

The other boy fired and missed by 
about a foot. 


36 


TOGGLES 


“Shucks!” said Toggles, taking from 
his pocket his own sling-shot that 
Grandpa had made for him only the day 
before. “I can do better than that.” 

He fired and, sure enough, his stone 
struck it full and square. 

“You can’t hit that birch,” said the 
other boy. 

“Yes, I can,” answered Toggles. 

They fired and that time they both 
missed. 

“What’s your name?” asked Toggles. 

“Johnny,” answered the boy. 
“What’s your name?” 

“My name’s Toggles and I don’t live 
here. We’re just visiting Grandpa. 
Say, come up to the barn; Grandpa has 
made me a shooting-gallery up there, 


TEE CITY OF REFUGE 


37 


with a real target. We can have heaps 
of fun.” 

So they went to the barn together 
and, after they had shot until they were 
tired, they lay down upon the hay and 
Toggles told Johnny all about the City 
of Refuge. 

“And that’s why you’ve got a star,” 
inquired Johnny, “ ’cause you’re a 
marshal?” 

“That’s it,” answered Toggles. 

“Wish I had a star,” said Johnny. 

“I’ll give you this if you’ll be a mar- 
shal, too.” 

“Will you?” exclaimed Johnny. 
“All right, sir, I’ll do it.” 

“You can’t shoot at birds any more,” 
warned Toggles. 


38 


TOGGLES 


“I won’t, ” Johnny promised. “You 
never hit ’em, anyway,” he added. 

“And if anybody else does, you must 
stop him or tell Grandpa — ’cause that’s 
what a marshal is for.” 

“I will.” 

“Honest truth?” 

“Honest truth.” 

“All right. Here is your star.” 

“I guess I’ll have to be going home,” 
said Johnny, as he fastened it to his 
coat. “It’s ’most milking-time and 
I’m just learning to milk; I’ll be over 
again to-morrow.” * 

“Don’t forget about being a mar- 
shal.” 

“No, I won’t. Good-by.” 

“Good-by.” 

That was the way there came to be 


THE CITY OF REFUGE 


39 


two marshals for the City of Refuge, 
and they both faithfully discharged 
their duties, for in the main, through 
all that long summer, all the birds that 
came to live at Grandpa’s farm lived 
happy and undisturbed. 


CHAPTER IV 

THE HOUSE THAT TOGGLES BUILT 

O NE of the things that Toggles en- 
joyed most at the farm was just 
visiting with his grandfather. They 
spent a great deal of time together and 
talked about ever so many things. 
Grandpa never seemed too busy to visit. 
He never talked so that Toggles could 
not understand him, he never teased and 
made fun as so many people do when 
they talk with little boys, and yet he 
did sometimes say some extraordinary 
things. For instance, they were on 
the porch one morning waiting for 

40 


HOUSE THAT TOGGLES BUILT 41 

Grandma to call them to breakfast when 
Grandpa suddenly asked: 

“What are you going to do for a liv- 
ing when you grow up to be a man?” 

Toggles did not answer right away, 
because he knew it was an important 
question and needed to be thought about. 

“I should like,” he said finally, 
4 4 when I grow up to be a man, to earn 
my living by building houses.” 

4 4 That is a good thing to want to do,” 
said Grandpa, 4 4 and if I were in your 
place I think I would begin right away, 
now, and build all the houses I could 
and then, by the time you are a man, 
you will know, you see, without any 
doubt, whether you want to keep on 
building houses or do something else.” 

Toggles stared in round-eyed wonder. 


42 


TOGGLES 


“But, Grandpa,” he exclaimed, “I’m 
not big enough to build houses!” 

“I think you’re big enough to begin,” 
said Grandpa. 

“A real house — a house that could be 
lived in?” queried Toggles. 

“A house that could be lived in.” 

Grandpa smiled, but not as if he were 
joking, and Toggles was silent with 
amazement. 

“But I haven’t any tools,” he said at 
length. 

“It would not take many. Let’s 
think up what you have.” 

“Well,” began Toggles, “there’s my 
knife — it’s got four blades and it’s 
pretty sharp.” 

“Yes.” 

“And in the attic I found a bracket- 


HOUSE THAT TOGGLES BUILT 43 

saw; Grandma said I could have that.’’ 

“Yes.” 

“And I know Grandma would lend 
me the tack-hammer and the gimlet.” 

“I think that would be tools enough.” 

“ To build a house that could be lived 
in?” 

“I think so.” 

“It would take nails,” added Toggles. 

“I could furnish the nails,” said 
Grandpa. 

“It would be a house that could be 
lived in?” repeated Toggles. 

“Certainly. I think you might be 
able to get tenants within a month ; and, 
yes, they would pay you rent, too.” 

“In money?” asked Toggles. 

“Well, no, not in money but in some- 
thing just as good — or better.” 


44 


TOGGLES 


“And I’m big enough to build it all 
by myself?” 

“All by yourself.” 

It took a good many questions to find 
out just what Grandpa meant but when 
at last Toggles knew he was anxious to 
begin at once and, right away after 
breakfast they went to the workshop 
and there Grandpa picked out the lum- 
ber and helped him a little with the 
planning, and then Toggles went to 
work and until noon he was as busy as 
one of the bees. 

“I’m going to drive over to Mr. 
Smith’s farm this afternoon,” said 
Grandpa, at dinner, “and he has just 
such a house as you are building. 
Would you like to go along and see it?” 

Toggles wanted to go, of course, and, 


HOUSE THAT TOGGLES BUILT 45 

when he saw the house, he first fairly 
danced with delight, and then fell to 
studying it intently to see just how it 
was made. 

“Grandpa,” he demanded, on the 
way home, “can I make one as nice as 
that?” 

“I think so,” answered Grandpa. 
“You may want me to help you plan a 
little more, but I think you can do all 
the building yourself.” 

“And the painting?” asked Tog- 
gles. “How about that?” 

“That is really another kind of 
work,” said Grandpa. “The man who 
builds a house very seldom paints it; 
but, if you get it built, I will see that it 
is painted.” 

Toggles had to fill the wood-box, and 


46 


TOGGLES 


pump water, and help Watch drive up 
the cows, and do a great many other 
things about the farm, but every day he 
did some work on his house and by the 
end of the week anybody could have 
seen at a glance what it was going to be. 
The next week it was ready to be 
painted, and then, on Saturday morn- 
ing, what should happen but Toggles 
woke up all spots and blotches and when 
the doctor looked at them he said, 
“ Chicken-pox.” 

Toggles stayed in bed all that day and 
all the next and it was a week before 
he felt like going outside or playing 
very hard. During those days he 
rather forgot about his house and about 
everything that had been going on out- 
side and was content to lie still most of 


HOUSE THAT TOGGLES BUILT 47 

the time and be read to — sometimes he 
did not even care for that. 

On the day that the last of the spots 
disappeared, Grandpa came in at din- 
ner-time to say: 

“I have something to show you.” 

“What is it?” Toggles demanded. 

“Wait till you’ve eaten your dinner.” 

So, when Toggles had eaten a dinner 
almost as large as those he ate when he 
was well, Grandpa stooped over so he 
could climb on his back and they went 
out on the porch. 

“See,” said Grandpa, “it’s all 
painted and, I declare, I don’t know 
but the tenants have moved in.” 

Toggles strained his eyes in the di- 
rection Grandpa was pointing and, sure 
enough, there it stood, a beautiful bird- 


48 


TOGGLES 


house, made just like Grandpa’s house, 
only of course ever and ever so much 
smaller, painted just like it, too, white 
with green blinds, and set away up on a 
high post, where birds could easily get 
at it and cats could not. 

There was a rustle in the little door- 
way, a flash of blue and brown and a 
bird dropped upon the bough of an 
apple-tree near them. 

“Is that — ?” whispered Toggles and 
Grandpa nodded. 

The little new tenant turned his head 
toward them and twittered softly some 
bird words that were very pretty but 
not easily to be translated. 

“What do you suppose he is saying?” 
asked Toggles. 

“Listen,” said Grandpa, “and when 



The little tenant began to sing as only a bluebird can 

Paye 49. 



HOUSE THAT TOGGLES BUILT 49 

you think you know what he is doing, 
you tell me.” 

The little tenant hopped to another 
twig, shook himself joyfully, gave a 
little warble of introduction, as if to 
make sure his voice was in good tune 
and then threw back his head and began 
to sing as only a bluebird can. 

It did not seem polite to interrupt 
him and Toggles waited until he had 
finished his song dnd. flown away. 
Then he spoke. 

“I know,” he said, “he was paying 
the rent.” 

“That’s right,” answered Grandpa. 

And they went back into the house. 


CHAPTER Y 


THE FARM AT WAR 

T OG-G-LES and Johnny, being only 
marshals, had of course no sort 
of right to declare war, but at the time 
they never thought of that and the fight- 
ing might have started and all sorts of 
trouble resulted, if at dinner Toggles 
had not just happened to mention the 
matter to Grandpa. 

“When does the war begin ?” he 
asked. 

“This afternoon,” said Toggles; “I 
really did not care so very much about 
it but J ohnny asked me and it did not 
seem polite to say no.” 

50 


TEE FARM AT WAR 


51 


“Of course not/’ answered Grandpa. 
“Do you know why it’s begun ?” 

“No. He only said we’d have one 
and we’d start right after dinner.” 

“Do you think you could take me! 
I’m over age now.” 

“Oh, we’d like to have you come.” 

So it was that Grandpa enlisted in 
the war declared against the toads and 
when J ohnny and Toggles marched off 
armed with their sling-shots, Grandpa 
came bringing a basket and a covered 
minnow-pail. He explained that in the 
basket there were doughnuts; Toggles 
and J ohnny might be major and colonel ; 
he was quartermaster — that was the 
name they called the man who looked 
after the things to eat. 

It was a clear, sunshiny afternoon. 


52 


TOGGLES 


J ohnny took the lead, they passed 
through the orchard and climbed the 
orchard fence into the pasture; there 
they walked three abreast and scuffling 
through the long grass looked sharply 
on all sides for toads but not one could 
they find. In the woods it was nearly 
as bad and they had hunted almost an 
hour and were growing quite discour- 
aged when Grandpa, lifting a great log, 
suddenly exclaimed. “ There’s one. 
Don’t shoot. We’ll take him pris- 
oner.” 

And the next moment he had the toad 
wriggling in his hand. 

“That’ll make you have warts,” 
warned Johnny. 

Grandpa put the toad into the min- 
now-pail upon some leaves. 



“Don’t shoot. We’ll take him prisoner.” — Page 52 































THE FARM AT WAR 


53 


“I think not,” he said, “I’ve often 
handled them that way.” 

“ What are we going to do with him ?” 
asked Toggles. 

“I think we ought to try him,” said 
Grandpa. 

“What?” demanded both boys. 

< ‘ Try him. That ’s what they do with 
prisoners to find out whether they ought 
to be punished and, if so, how much. 
But first, I think we better eat our 
doughnuts and, if the prisoner is hun- 
gry, why, of course, we ought to feed 
him.” 

They sat down on a little hillock and 
Grandpa opened the basket. Then, 
when each one was eating a sugar-cov- 
ered doughnut, Grandpa lifted the 
cover of the minnow-pail and dropped 


54 


TOGGLES 


in a little piece for the toad. He paid 
no attention to it and they were just 
turning away when Johnny exclaimed: 

“Did you see that?” 

“What?” returned Toggles. 

“Why, that fly.” 

“No.” 

“He lit on that piece of doughnut and 
he’s gone. That toad just stuck out his 
tongue, quick as lightning, and licked 
him off.” 

“Get him another,” suggested Tog- 
gles. 

They killed one, after considerable 
trouble, and dropped him beside the 
toad but he did not touch it and then, 
while they were watching, another fly 
lit on the piece of doughnut and sud- 
denly the toad snapped him up, just as 


TEE FARM AT WAR 


55 


he had the first one. It was really a 
wonderful thing to see and more won- 
derful when Grandpa explained that 
the toad’s tongue was put in backwards, 
fastened at the front instead of at the 
back and had a tip like a piece of very 
sticky fly-paper, so that he could throw 
it out like a lasso and it would hold to 
anything that it struck. 

Once they knew that the toad pre- 
ferred to catch his food alive they put 
in ants for him and he snapped them 
up as swiftly as he had the flies. They 
watched him quite a while and then, 
when they had eaten all the doughnuts 
and the prisoner seemed to have eaten 
all he cared for, the quartermaster 
called a council of war. 

“ First,” he said, “we ought to find 


56 


TOGGLES 


out if we are having any other wars and, 
if so, whether it is a good thing to begin 
fighting this one at the same time.” 

“It’s the only one I know,” said 
Johnny. 

“Well,” answered Grandpa. “Tog- 
gles and I have another and we did not 
begin it, either. A big army has 
marched into our potato patch and has 
begun eating up the vines and we were 
fighting them all yesterday afternoon 
but they are there yet. We haven’t 
beaten them.” 

‘ ‘ I know, ’ ’ exclaimed Toggles. ‘ ‘ Po- 
tato-bugs!” 

“And there’s another army, harder 
to beat, because every soldier has a fly- 
ing-machine. In fact we’ve almost 


THE FARM AT WAR 


57 


given up trying to fight them and sim- 
ply put up breastworks at the doors and 
windows to keep them from fighting 
us.” 

“Mies!” shouted both boys. 

“And now, are there any others?” 

“My mother is fighting ants,” said 
Johnny. “Little bits of red ones. She 
says she doesn’t know how she’ll ever 
get ’em out of our pantry.” 

“Well now, the toads, ’ ’ said Grandpa, 
“are fighting these same armies and, so 
long as we are fighting them, too, it does 
not seem to me that we ought to be 
fighting the toads. Anyway, not until 
we have beaten the ants, and the flies, 
and the potato-bugs; then, if we had a 
good reason, we might fight the toads. 


58 


TOGGLES 


Of course, to fight them if we didn’t 
have a good reason, would be foolish 
and wicked.” 

The boys looked very serious, as it 
was perfectly proper they should, for a 
council of war is a solemn matter. 

“I suppose we better let him go,” said 
Toggles. 

“No,” said Grandpa, “I don’t know 
that I would do that. The toads can 
help us and it seems to me we better 
take them right into our army. All the 
pay they would ask would be protec- 
tion from their other enemies and 
enough to eat and we could see that they 
had that.” 

It seemed a splendid idea and, after 
a little more planning, they set off 
again, this time with Grandpa ahead. 


TEE FARM AT WAR 


59 


He led them through some marshy 
places, down to the little pond and it 
was really surprising how many toads 
they found. Before it was time to start 
home, there were sixteen in the covered 
minnow-pail and, as they walked back 
through the woods, Grandpa explained 
that now the wars could go on day and 
night because the toads did nearly all 
their fighting in the dark. 

Eight of the new recruits they sta- 
tioned in the potato-patch, for there 
they seemed most needed. Three were 
detailed for the flower-beds, and the 
other five were sent to reenforce the 
army at Johnny’s home. 

All summer long they did valiant 
service and Johnny and Toggles came 
greatly to value them as faithful allies. 


60 


TOGGLES 


Before the season ended, almost a hun- 
dred more had been enlisted and, while 
the flies were never wholly beaten, the 
other foes were finally all worsted. 
The mercenaries had well earned their 
furlough by the time they went into 
winter-quarters. 


CHAPTER VI 


THE BEAKER’S BABY 

G RANDPA had said there nearly 
always was one and, time and 
again, Toggles had looked for him hut 
after all it was Mabel, who had never 
looked for him at all, who was the first 
to see him. 

She was still afraid to play anywhere 
near the bee-hives. Toggles was get- 
ting used to their buzzing and he had 
told her that good bees, like Grandpa’s, 
never stung unless people bothered 
them ; but she was afraid, just the same, 
and so she had made her play-house 
away down in the orchard where all 
61 


62 


TOGGLES 


over the fence grew the nasturtiums. 

That afternoon she had decided to 
build an addition and Toggles was get- 
ting stones for her (every one, I sup- 
pose, knows how little girls make houses 
out of stones) when he heard her 
scream and, dropping his stones, ran 
back to her as fast as he could. 

He found her with her face close 
against the bark of one of the old apple- 
trees and her eyes tightly covered with 
both hands, as if she were “ standing” 
for hide-and-seek; but, so far as he 
could see, there was nothing at all to 
frighten her. 

“What made you cry V 9 he asked. 

Mabel cautiously uncovered one eye, 
then the other, and then looked all 
around. 


THE BEAKER’S BABY 


63 


“It was a ‘ beaker,’ ” she said. 

“What’s a 4 beaker’?” asked Toggles, 
not knowing it was a word Mabel had 
just that moment made up, all by her- 
self, out of her own head. Mabel could 
do that. 

“I think,” she answered, “I think 
it’s a bird.” 

“A big bird — from the barn?” 

When they first came to the farm 
Toggles himself had, to tell the truth, 
been a bit afraid of the geese and tur- 
keys. 

“No. It was little but it was very 
cross, and I don’t like things to be cross 
at me.” 

Toggles could of course understand 
that but he had no sort of idea what the 
“beaker” could be and he had just 


64 


TOGGLES 


opened his mouth to ask another ques- 
tion when Mabel screamed : 

“ There he comes again!” 

Toggles swung round to look and saw, 
poised in the air, not six feet away, the 
sharp little bill pointed straight at his 
face, a tiny humming-bird, looking so 
angry and spiteful that Toggles laughed 
aloud and then it flew away. Really, 
though at the time Toggles did not 
think of it, a laugh of the right sort is 
one of the best things in the world to 
drive off angry, spiteful things. 

At dinner he told Grandpa about it. 

“And I thought perhaps what made 
him so angry,” he added, “was that he 
had a nest there, and of course he didn’t 
know about this whole farm being a 


\r 



“ There he comes again! ” 


Page 64 



THE BEAKER’S BABY 


65 


City of Refuge for the birds and so he 
was afraid that we might hurt his 
babies.’ * 

“ Maybe,” said Grandpa, “but I 
hardly think so. To tell the truth, 
brave as the ‘ beaker’ is, he has a really 
dreadful temper, and gets all out of pa- 
tience at very little things. He makes 
a pretty little nest, but it is hard to find 
and in all my life I have never seen but 
one of them.” 

After that Toggles was of course 
more anxious than ever to find where 
the “beaker” had made his nest and 
many an hour did he spend looking for 
it with mother’s field-glass, but he never 
could trace the “beaker” to it, though 
he saw him many times. When he 


66 


TOGGLES 


finally did find it, it was quite by acci- 
dent and not when he was looking for it 
at all. 

He had climbed to the haymow of the 
horse-barn and was looking out of the 
door at which the men put in the hay 
when, as the wind stirred the leaves of 
the great elm-tree, he caught a glimpse 
of a little gray-green something, hardly 
larger than a walnut, sticking up like a 
knob on one of the twigs. He looked 
again but the leaves were in the way; 
then once more, as the wind blew, and 
there it was still. He never thought, 
even then, of its being a nest, but he 
puzzled over what it could be until 
finally he went for the field-glass. 
Then he knew, and his heart beat high 
with excitement when, in the bottom of 


THE BEAKER'S BABY 


67 


the nest, which was so small that it 
made him think of a lichen-covered, 
down-lined thimble, he saw two eggs, 
hardly larger than white beans. 

When he looked next day there was 
only one. What had become of the 
other they never learned but it made 
them anxious about the one that was 
left, and that very afternoon Toggles 
put some wire netting around the tree 
(Grandpa had shown him how) so that 
Zenobia could not climb it. Not of 
course that he suspected Zenobia of 
having taken the egg but there were 
several dreadful things Zenobia had 
done. One time in fact she had been 
convicted of treason and soundly 
spanked with the whisk-broom, and 
even that had not reformed her. So 


68 


TOGGLES 


Toggles was not going to take any 
chances of another accident. 

The whole family, excepting of 
course Mother, (and she was told all 
about it), climbed to the haymow to 
look at that tiny nest and Toggles went 
every day and sometimes oftener. For 
the first three days there was no change 
but on the fourth he rushed into the 
house shouting: 

‘ ‘ It’s broken the shell, it’s broken the 
shell! The ‘ beaker’ has a baby.” 

And that day there was almost a 
steady procession up and down the lad- 
der to the haymow, to look at the wee, 
featherless mite squirming in the bot- 
tom of the nest. 

It was almost three weeks before the 
baby was old enough to fly away, but at 


THE BEAKER’S BABY 69 

last he did, and that same afternoon, 
while Toggles was in the orchard, along 
came the father 4 4 beaker” and flew 
right at him, just as on that first day. 

6 1 And I didn’t mind it then/’ said 
Toggles, when he told Grandpa about 
it, 4 4 because then he didn’t know me; 
but this time I’d been friends to him 
and known him a long time and I’d — 
why, I’d helped him bring up his baby. ” 

4 4 That’s true,” answered Grandpa, 
4 4 but I suppose he didn’t understand. 
That’s one of the things we have to 
learn, as we get older, to be kind just 
the same to people who never say, 
4 Thank you,’ and who seem not even to 
know that we have been kind to them.” 

4 4 And I suppose,” added Toggles, 
4 4 that you just have to be happy about 


70 


TOGGLES 


it because you know that anyway 
it was the right thing to do.” 

“ That’s just the way to look at it,” 
said Grandpa, 


CHAPTER VII 


TOGGLES AND THE BEES 

I N the beginning, as I have told you, 
Toggles had been afraid of them 
and, when he heard a “ buzz-buzz’ ’ com- 
ing nearer and nearer to his head, had 
wanted to strike with his hat or run 
away into the house. But Grandpa had 
explained to him that, though the bees 
could hurt him, they did not want to, 
they were only unusually busy at this 
time of year and, like other busy people, 
they did not like to be interfered with. 
Once Toggles had learned that, he and 
the bees became great friends and he 
would let one of them light on his hand 

71 


72 


TOGGLES 


and walk slowly across it which was 
something that even Johnny was a little 
afraid to do. 

The bees usually went to work before 
he was up in the morning, but some- 
times he was awake early enough to see 
the last of them setting off, and how- 
ever far he might wander during the 
day, he was almost certain to meet some 
of them flying home with their loads, or 
balancing upon the clover blossoms 
which Grandpa told him they 4 1 tapped , 1 9 
in somewhat the same way that people 
tap the maple-trees in early spring. 

After supper, when their busy day 
was over, Toggles would often walk 
down among the hives, all so quiet now, 
with not a worker in sight except the 
little bee sentry pacing back and forth 


TOGGLES AND TEE BEES 


73 


in front of the entrance, and it was all 
as interesting as anything he had ever 
seen. 

Excepting when he was helping 
Grandpa, he never wore a bee-veil now 
and, even when at work, his hands were 
always bare. Grandpa would open the 
hives and show him about them, until he 
could tell which was the honey comb and 
which the brood comb, knew the “ bee- 
bread,” and could pick out at a glance 
the queen with her little retinue of at- 
tendants, that never left her, and the 
great lazy drones, that did not work at 
all and ate just as much as any other 
bees. 

Also, he learned to hammer together 
the little honey-boxes which grandpa 
paid him ten cents a hundred for mak- 


74 


TOGGLES 


in g. That was fun but, when the day 
was warm and Grandpa was not watch- 
ing, it was work, too, and to make a hun- 
dred took a good while. 

Toggles was learning a great deal 
these days, so much that when Grandpa 
went to the city to be gone from Tues- 
day till Friday, he left the bees partly 
in charge of Chris and partly in charge 
of Toggles. That is how this story 
came to be. 

They had been cutting some bits of 
comb from the bottom and sides of the 
hives, where bees ought not to put 
honey, and Chris said, “What does he 
do with these?” 

Toggles thought, but he could not re- 
member. 

“Let’s put them down in front of the 


TOGGLES AND THE BEES 


75 


hives,’ ’ he suggested, “then the bees can 
take the honey in and put it somewhere 
else.” 

They did it and the bees went to work 
at once. 

Next afternoon Toggles went down 
among the hives and the very first thing 
that happened a bee flew straight in his 
face and stung him right on the end of 
the nose. He had the stinger out in a 
second and rubbed on some ammonia 
but it seemed such an outrageous thing 
for a bee to do that he put on his bee- 
veil and went back to see, if he could, 
what was the matter. 

A bit of honey in front of one of the 
hives was covered with bees and, all 
around it, were bees struggling and 
fighting, locked together and rolling 


76 


TOGGLES 


over and over in the grass. Around at 
the back some other bees seemed trying 
to get in where the cover fitted loosely 
and inside was buzzing which had be- 
come an angry roar. Toggles went 
from hive to hive until he had seen them 
all ; and in several of them there seemed 
to be trouble. What it all meant he 
could not guess. 

He went to the train to meet Grandpa 
and, driving up from the station Tog- 
gles told him all about it. Grandpa did 
not say much but, as soon as he reached 
home, he changed his clothes and he and 
Toggles went down into the bee-yard. 
Toggles watched him while he scraped 
the honey from the front of the hives, 
stopped up the cracks with bits of rags, 
moved the blocks in front to make the 


TOGGLES AND TEE BEES 


77 


entrances smaller, and closed some of 
the hives up altogether. Then they 
walked over to the honey-house. 

“What was the matter, Grandpa?’’ 
asked Toggles. 

“They were stealing from each 
other.” 

“But what made them steal?” in- 
sisted Toggles, for he knew that always 
before the bees had been perfectly law- 
abiding. 

Grandpa sat down on a pile of 
“supers,” as they call the frames which 
they put over the hives, and lifted Tog- 
gles to his knee. 

“Well,” he said, “when you put 
the honey out in front of the hives, the 
bees came to get it, and then bees from 
other hives came to get it, and then the 


78 


TOGGLES 


bees from the other hives went inside 
to get more and other bees began doing 
the same thing, and by and by they 
were all stealing and fighting.” 

“But, Grandpa,” exclaimed Toggles, 
“I only did it to help them. I thought 
it would be easier for them.” 

“Yes,” said Grandpa, “and it was 
easier. But here is something to re- 
member! It is not a good thing for 
bees or for boys to have things too easy. 
Now some boys, when they want money, 
think that the best way is to go to their 
mothers, or their fathers, or their 
grandpas, and ask for it. But I think 
it’s a great deal better for them to earn 
it, making honey-boxes.” 

“Yes,” Toggles agreed, “so do I.” 


CHAPTER VIII 


TWO BOYS WHO DID THINGS OYER 

O NE of the things at the farm that 
Toggles enjoyed the most was, 
not the feeding of the chickens or the 
pigs, nor sliding down the haystacks, 
nor even wading in the creek but just 
talking with his grandpa, philosophizing 
they called it, and, to tell the truth, 
Grandpa seemed to enjoy it as much as 
Toggles did. Usually they just dis- 
cussed things in a serious way, but once 
in a while they told stories. Grandpa 
always insisted that he was no story- 
teller but here are two stories that they 
told each other one day when a sudden 

79 


80 


TOGGLES 


shower had made them run for shelter 
into the granary. You can judge for 
yourself whether they are good enough 
to tell here. 

“Once upon a time,” Grandpa began, 
“there was a boy who did things over.” 

“Was he as old as I am?” Toggles 
asked. 

“Yes,” answered Grandpa, “but you 
never saw him, for he lived a long time 
ago, when Grandpa was a little boy.” 

“All right,” said Toggles; “go on.” 

“He had a nice home and his father 
and mother loved him and, if it had not 
been for his doing things over, I think 
he might have grown up to be good. 

“You see his mother had told him he 
must never say any bad words and, for 
a long time he didn’t but one day he 


TWO BOYS 


81 


heard another boy say some and then 
once, when he was angry he said them 
and then — because he was a boy who did 
things over — he said some every time he 
was angry, until he could not have 
helped it without trying very hard. 

“When he was old enough to go to 
school, he went every day for a whole 
month and then, one afternoon, he ran 
away. That of course was a pretty bad 
thing to do but it could have been made 
all right again, or almost all right again, 
if that night he had only told his mother 
about it and the next morning told his 
teacher; but he didn’t do that and, what 
was worse, his doing things over made 
him run away from school the next day 
and keep on running away until his 
mother and his teacher found out about 


82 


TOGGLES 


it and lie had to be punished, and even 
that did not cure him. 

“One day, after he had learned to 
say bad words and run away from 
school, he saw on his mother’s table a 
dime that he knew belonged to her and 
he took it and put it in his pocket and 
went down town and spent it for candy. 
Now that, you see, was the worst thing 
he had done yet, but even for that I feel 
sure his mother would have forgiven 
him, if he had only told her about it. 
But he didn’t, and his doing things over 
made him keep on taking things that be- 
longed to his father, and his mother, 
and the little boys and girls who went to 
school with him, until from being a bad 
boy, he grew up to be a bad man and, I 
am sorry to think it, I don’t believe he 


TWO BOYS 


83 


ever changed and was good again.” 

It was a sad story, and for fully as 
much as a minute, while the rain poured 
down and made tiny pools and rivulets 
all over the farm-yard, Toggles sat 
thinking and was as quiet as could be. 

“But, Grandpa,” he said, finally, “I 
don’t see how his doing things over 
made him bad. It was because the 
things that he did over were bad ; if he 
had done good things over, he would 
have been a good boy.” 

“I declare,” exclaimed Grandpa, 
“may be that’s so! Suppose you tell 
me a story about a boy who did good 
things over.” 

Toggles stretched his legs over into 
the oat-bin and wiggled his toes among 
the oats. 


84 


TOGGLES 


“Well, once upon a time,” he began, 
“there was another boy who did things 
over. He didn’t live a long time ago 
but you never saw him because he lived 
a long way off ; and his name was Jack. 
And the first warm day in summer, 
when he went barefoot, his mama said 
to him, ‘ Jack, be sure to wash your feet 
before you go to bed,’ and Jack didn’t 
like to wash his feet but he remem- 
bered, and then — he was a boy who 
did things over, you know — he did it 
the next night, and then the next 
night, till finally he hardly had to think 
about it at all, any more than saying his 
prayers. And then — And then — oh, 
yes, and then when he went to school, 
his mama said, ‘ Jack, don’t you ever be 
tardy,’ and sometimes he had to run 


TWO BOYS 


85 


hard but he always got there, and he 
kept doing it over till nobody ever 
thought of his being tardy. And then 
— And then in school his teacher said 
to him, ‘Jack, learn your lesson/ and 
he learned it just as well as he could; 
and then he kept on getting good lessons 
— because he was a boy who did things 
over, you know — and — and I think he 
grew up to be a good man.” 

“Well, now, do you know,” said 
Grandpa, “I believe your story is a 
great deal better than mine. Because, 
you see, my story did not come out very 
well and I am a good deal like Mabel. 
I like to have stories come out all 
right.” 


CHAPTER IX 


BUTTERFLIES AND BOYS 

T the farm there were all sorts of 



XjL interesting and beautiful and en- 
joyable things, but, what was best of 
all, — and Toggles said “ Thank you” 
for it every night when he said his 
prayers — mother was really getting bet- 
ter ; not so fast, to be sure, as they would 
have liked, because she did not get up 
for breakfast and she had to go to bed 
even earlier than Toggles, but she no 
longer needed a nurse and Miss Curtis 
had gone back to the city. She came 
down-stairs every day for dinner and 
supper and could walk about the house 


86 


BUTTERFLIES AND BOYS 


87 


a bit, and one day she felt well enough 
so that they invited company. 

Away down on the river, almost too 
far for Toggles to walk, Grandpa owned 
a piece of woods and there were some 
campers there, a Mr. McRae, who was 
a minister, and his wife and little 
daughter Martha. There were some 
other campers, too, on the other side of 
the river and farther from town, some 
“ fresh-air children” from the big city 
— but it isn’t time to tell about them 
yet. 

Grandpa and Grandma invited Mr. 
and Mrs. McRae to dinner and in the 
afternoon Toggles and Mabel took Mar- 
tha all over the barn and the other 
buildings, and swung her in the big 
swing, and she had a fine time. No bet- 


88 


TOGGLES 


ter time, though, than they did the after- 
noon that they spent with Martha at the 
camp. Later they stayed there all 
night but that, too, is a story that comes 
later. 

The night after their first visit at the 
camp, Toggles was sitting in the ham- 
mock with his grandpa and telling all 
about what they had done. 

“But,” he went on, “there is one 
thing I don’t understand, and that is, 
Martha catches butterflies. She keeps 
them all spread out in a box with glass 
over it, all different kinds, you know; 
and they are very pretty and she knows 
ever so much about them, even their 
names. There is one kind they call the 
Monarch and one the Viceroy and then 
the Tiger Swallow-tail. I never knew 


BUTTERFLIES AND BOYS 


89 


before that butterflies had names; and 
she knows many hard words about them 
and just what color each one’s wings 
are, and how their tongues are made, 
and what they eat. I never thought 
there were so many things to find out 
about butterflies and I surely never 
thought a little girl, not as old as I am, 
would know them.” 

“The more a person studies,” said 
Grandpa, “the more he finds that there 
are wonderful things to learn about 
nearly everything in the world.” 

“But that isn’t what I started to 
say,” Toggles went on; “she catches 
them and kills them. She told me she 
gave them something to smell of that 
makes them go to sleep, and then they 
die, and then she and her papa take 


90 


TOGGLES 


them and pin them into the box. He 
helps her do it — and he’s a minister.” 

“Why not?” asked Grandpa. 

“But killing them! We don’t let 
anybody kill birds on this farm, you 
know that ; and if it is bad to kill birds, 
why isn’t it bad to kill butterflies?” 

“That is a hard kind of question.” 

“Don’t you know the answer?” Tog- 
gles inquired anxiously, for, to tell the 
truth, he had asked some questions to 
which Grandpa did not know the an- 
swer, and he had said he doubted if any 
one else did. 

“Yes,” answered Grandpa, “I know 
the answer, but I am not sure that I can 
make you understand.” 

“Try,” Toggles suggested. 

“Well, in the first place, it isn’t al- 


BUTTERFLIES AND BOYS 


91 


ways wrong to kill things. You and I 
have killed a great many things this 
summer on purpose. That army now, 
that’s eating our potato-vines — ” 

“They’re just bugs,” Toggles inter- 
rupted. 

“I know, but even bugs like to keep 
living and growing and we would let 
them only — Why ? ’ ’ 

“They spoil the potatoes.” 

“Why shouldn’t they spoil them?” 

Grandpa was always asking questions 
such as nobody else would ever have 
thought of asking. Trying to answer 
them was sometimes almost as much fun 
as guessing riddles. 

“We want the potatoes to eat,” said 
Toggles. 

“So do the bugs,” said Grandpa. 


92 


TOGGLES 


“Well, but — ” and Toggles stopped, 
puzzled but laughing, “Why we are 
folks and they are just bugs.” 

“That’s right,” Grandpa agreed* 
“and folks are worth more than any- 
thing else God has made. That is why 
we can kill even the chickens, that we 
are really fond of, if it is for food for 
people. Do you see?” 

“But people don’t eat butterflies,” 
said Toggles, laughing again, “and but- 
terflies don’t spoil things, the way po- 
tato-bugs do. At least,” he added, “I 
don’t think they spoil things.” 

“There the hard part begins,” said 
Grandpa. “You see the potatoes, and 
chickens, and other things that we eat 
go into our mouths to make strong 
hands and feet, but other things must 


BUTTERFLIES AND BOYS 


93 


go into onr ears and eyes to make 
strong, well-filled — What?” 

“Heads.” 

“Yes, heads, minds ; and all the things 
we see, and hear, and read about, the 
flowers, and trees, and animals, and 
many, many other things, help our 
minds, just as potatoes and chickens 
help our bodies. It would be wrong to 
kill chickens or even potato-bugs just 
for fun and to carry around a fly- 
swatter, hitting every butterfly you saw ; 
that, it seems to me, would be very 
wicked indeed. But to kill a butterfly 
to study about it and to make some little 
mind grow by showing it how wonder- 
fully God had made the butterfly, that, 
I think, is not any more wicked than to 
kill a chicken to feed some little atom- 


94 


TOGGLES 


ach. You see, it isn’t just killing 
things, it is why you kill them that 
makes it good or bad.” 

Before he went to bed, when he came 
in to say good-night, Toggles said: 

“Grandpa, could you help me find a 
verse? The teacher in our Sunday 
school class, down at the schoolhouse, 
wanted us each to learn one.” 

Grandpa took down the big Bible, 
from which he read each morning and 
hunted until he found the place. Then 
he read the verse aloud and Toggles re- 
peated it after him : 

“ ‘Fear ye not therefore, ye are of 
more value than many sparrows.’ ” 

“And if you ever forget just what 
that means,” said Grandpa, “you can 
think ‘butterflies.’ ” 


CHAPTER X 


LOST IN THE WOODS 

I T was the following week that the 
invitation came to stay all night in 
the camp and I can’t begin to tell you 
the good time that Toggles and Mabel 
had there, but, on the second afternoon, 
Grandpa and Grandma and Watch 
came down to bring them back and, 
while Grandpa and Grandma were visit- 
ing with Mr. and Mrs. McRae and 
Watch lay asleep in the sunshine, the 
children went for one last long walk in 
the woods. 

They went farther than they had 


95 


96 


TOGGLES 


meant to and they were so busy playing 
explorers that they did not give very 
close attention to the direction in which 
they were exploring and finally, when 
they came to a tall stump, beside a tiny, 
tinkly rivulet with thick bushes grow- 
ing on either side, all of them thought 
the same thing at once. 

“ We’re lost!” exclaimed Martha. 
“I never saw this creek before.” 

“We’re lost! We’re lost!” echoed 
Mabel. “Oh, I want to go back, I want 
to go back.” 

And she set up a dismal cry. 

Toggles said nothing but it came over 
him suddenly that he was the only boy, 
and the oldest of the three besides, and 
that if they reached camp before dark 
he must find the way for them. If they 


LOST IN THE WOODS 


97 


were not in before dark, then Grandpa 
and Mr. McRae would take Watch, and 
some lanterns, and Watch would put his 
nose close to the ground, just as if he 
were smelling for a rabbit, and he would 
follow their trail and find them. 
Watch could do that, he knew, but it 
was not pleasant to think of spending 
even a part of the long night all alone 
by themselves in the big, dark woods, 
and so Toggles thought hard. 

“All holler!” he said. “One, two, 
three, now ” 

And they all shouted — even little Ma- 
bel, whose voice was choked with sobs. 

“Now listen,” he directed. 

They listened but there was no an- 
swer, only the chatter of a squirrel on a 
branch above and the “Caw! Caw!” of 


TOGGLES 


the crows, as if they were making fun 
of them. 

“Try again, ” he said. 

And again they shouted and listened 
but no answer came. 

Mabel began to cry once more ; Mar- 
tha ’s chin was quivering and her eyes 
were full of tears. Toggles saw clearly 
that if he showed a moment’s weaken- 
ing there would be a panic. 

“Father told me once,” he began, his 
voice very even and unconcerned, “that 
if I ever got lost in the woods I must 
holler first and then, if no one answered, 
I must make a ‘base’ by tying my hand- 
kerchief to a bush and then keep try- 
ing different directions until I found 
the right path but he said I mustn’t go 
far and I must keep turning back to the 


LOST IN THE WOODS 


99 


base, and lie said to holler every time I 
came back.” 

The others began to look more hope- 
ful. 

“Now this,” he went on, tying his 
handkerchief to a bush, “is our ‘base,’ 
and whatever you do you mustn’t lose 
it. We’ll go off, one one way and one 
another, and every step or two you must 
break over a bush, so you can find your 
way back to the handkerchief. You 
see, the under sides of the leaves are a 
different color, so it will be easy enough 
to trace your way back. J ust go a little 
way and then, if you don’t find a path or 
anything, you must follow back and 
start over. It’ll be lots easier for three 
than for one, because we can holler to 
each other. Now — ” 


100 


TOGGLES 


“But we can’t do that,” exclaimed 
Martha. 

“Why not?” 

“Why, Mabel is too little and she is 
too tired. We’ve walked a long way 
and — if we leave her alone she’ll cry. 
You know, she thinks there are bears in 
these woods.” 

That was of course very foolish. 
There were no bears in the woods and 
there had been none since Grandpa was 
a baby, but then, what did that matter, 
so long as Mabel thought they were 
there? Toggles did some hard think- 
ing. 

“She’ll have to stay at the ‘base’,” 
he said, “but — now — I’ll tell you — ” as 
there came a brilliant idea — “she must 


LOST IN THE WOODS 


101 


sing, good and loud, then we can’t lose 
the place. See here, Mabel.” 

And he explained it. 

Mabel was a good deal like other 
small sisters and frequently it did not 
seem to her at all necessary that she 
should do what Toggles suggested, even 
if he was three years older, but this 
time she seemed to see that it was really 
important that each one should do his 
part. So she nodded gravely and then 
sat down on a moss covered log. 

“I’ll sing ‘Ve Friend of Little Chil- 
dren,’ ” she announced. “I learned it 
in ve Sunday School — all ve verses. 
Good-by.” 

She waved her hand and, as Toggles 
and Martha disappeared into the under- 


102 


TOGGLES 


growth, breaking bushes and calling now 
and then, they heard behind them the 
voice of little Mabel, singing in the 
lonely woods: 

“Vere’s a friend of little children 
Above ve bright blue sky, 

A friend who never changes, 

Whose love can never die. ’ * 

A couple of rods away Toggles 
climbed upon a stump to get a wider 
view but all about looked unfamiliar. 
There were the trees and flowers, that 
were the same in all parts of the woods ; 
there was the cawing of the crows, who 
must have known where the path was 
but who would not tell. But nowhere 
was there a sign of a beaten path, or a 
glimpse of the river, or of the white 
canvas of the tents. 


LOST IN THE WOODS 


103 


He was nearing the top of the hillock 
and Mabel, hidden in the dense brush, 
had finished her song and begun again 
when suddenly he stopped and listened. 
Was the voice growing fainter? Or — 
no, it was moving away. What could it 
mean? 

It was dangerous hurrying, one might 
miss the trail, but he went back from 
broken bush to broken bush, twice as 
fast as he had come and stopped, pant- 
ing, at the “base.” 

There hung the waving handkerchief, 
there was the moss-grown log but no 
sign of Mabel or of Martha. He 
shouted, listened, and the next moment 
Martha burst through the undergrowth. 

“What’s the matter?” he demanded. 
“She’s gone.” 


104 


TOGGLES 


Martha was crying and very badly 
frightened. 

“Mabel,” shouted Toggles at the top 
of his voice, “Mabel, come back. Come 
back here.” 

It seemed a long, long time and then 
a wee, small voice came out of the 
woods, far ahead: 

“I ca-a-a-an’t come back. He won’t 
let me!” 

Martha’s tears burst out afresh, for 
this sounded very bear-like, and Tog- 
gles shouted with all his might. Could 
it be that some animal was dragging 
the child away ? They dared not think 
what might be happening, they only 
pressed on, with breathless speed, in the 
direction of the voice. They must res- 
cue Mabel. 


LOST IN THE WOODS 


105 


“What’s the matter?” called Tog- 
gles. 4 4 Tell us who is with you.” 

“He’ve got me by ve dwess — let go, 
you naughty, bad — let go, or I’ll stwike 
you— I’ll— ” 

And the rest was lost in a sound of 
scuffling and sobs. 

The rescuers were hurrying as fast as 
they could but there was danger in hav- 
ing no sound to guide them. They 
looked this way and that and Toggles 
called once more. 

4 4 Mabel! Mabel!” he commanded. 
4 4 Sing, sing as loud as you can. We’ll 
be there in a minute.” 

And, in obedience, came through the 
matted undergrowth, in broken and in- 
terrupted snatches, tears in the child’s 
voice but bravery as well : 


106 


TOGGLES 


“ Vere’s a friend — of little — child — ren — 
Above — ve bright — blue — sky — 

A friend — ” 

And then, as they burst through a 
tangle of sumac and hazel, they saw it 
all — faithful Watch, with his teeth 
firmly set in Mabel’s little skirt, and 
dragging her relentlessly along, in spite 
of her cuffs, and kicks, and holdings 
back. 

That night, when Toggles lay snug in 
bed and the rain he so loved to hear had 
begun to fall softly upon the roof, he 
called to his mother in the other room : 
“Oh, Mother.” 

“Yes,” she replied. 

“How did Watch happen to come 
looking for us?” 

“Grandma sent him,” explained 


LOST IN THE WOODS 


107 


Mother, who had heard the whole story. 
“She said, ‘Watch, I haven’t seen the 
children for a long while. You go find 
them.’ And he started right off, as if 
he knew just what she meant.” 

“Oh, that was it,” mused Toggles. 
“But, anyhow,” he added a moment 
later, “I think, ‘The Friend of Little 
Children’ helped a good deal.” 


CHAPTER XI 

MABEL’S PARTY 

T HREE birthdays, Toggles ’s and 
Mother’s and Mabel’s, came that 
summer while they were at the farm but 
Mabel’s came first and, for weeks be- 
forehand, Toggles was planning about it 
with Grandpa or Grandma, or Mother, 
for that was the time when Mother 
seemed so much better ; she came down 
stairs to almost all her meals and she 
was nearly like her old self. Most 
things about the party were easily ar- 
ranged but one was more serious : where 
were they to find any five-year-old little 
girls to come as guests? 

108 


MABEL’S PARTY 


109 


“You don’t think we could postpone 
it?” queried Toggles one night. 

“We could postpone the party,” an- 
swered Mother, “but I am afraid a 
birthday could not be postponed so 
wed.” 

“No,” Toggles admitted, “and a 
party wouldn’t really seem like a birth- 
day party if it didn’t come on your 
birthday. Only, if we were at home, 
why, Mary, and Jean, and Ruth, and 
Flossie could come and Mabel would en- 
joy it so much more.” 

“Aren’t there some little folks here 
that you could invite?” asked mother. 

“There’s Martha, from the camp,” 
answered Toggles, “but you can’t have 
a party with just one. Yes — and 
there’s Johnny but he’s a boy and I 


110 


TOGGLES 


don’t think Mabel cares much for 
Johnny.” 

Toggles had just crawled into bed and 
Mother sat beside him in her little rock- 
ing-chair. It was the time they usually 
read or told stories. 

“I think I’ll tell you a story about a 
party,” she said. 

“A birthday party?” 

“No, another kind — a wedding party. 
Once upon a time there was a king who 
had a little boy.” 

“He would be a prince, wouldn’t 
he?” commented Toggles, snuggling 
down more comfortably to listen. 

“Yes, and the prince grew up taller 
and stronger every day until finally he 
was old enough to get married ; and then 
the king, his father, made a splendid 


MABEL’S PARTY 


111 


wedding for him. On great tables in 
the largest room in the palace, they put 
everything good to eat and drink that 
they could think of, the servants were 
behind the chairs to pass things and 
they were all ready, except that the 
people whom the king had invited did 
not come. They waited, and waited, 
and waited, until the king was afraid 
that a mistake had been made, and so 
he sent a servant to ask some of the 
people who lived near why they had not 
come. The servant had not been gone 
long when back he came, running as 
hard as he could, with his clothes all 
torn, and covered with mud that had 
been thrown at him. Then he told the 
king that the people he had invited were 
all angry about something and said 


112 


TOGGLES 


they were not any of them coming to his 
party. ” 

“How did the king like that?” asked 
Toggles. 

“He was not pleased, you may be 
sure, but he did not storm about it. He 
said , 6 Very well. The people I have in- 
vited are not here but there are plenty 
of other people who will be glad to 
come. Go out and bring them in.’ So 
the king’s servants went out into the 
streets of the city and, wherever they 
found a poor lame man, or a blind man, 
or a beggar child, they asked, ‘ Wouldn’t 
you like to come to the king’s party?’ 
and the answer was always * Yes,’ until 
every chair was filled and I think they 
must have had a very good time, for I 
suppose that some of the poor little 


MABEL’S PARTY 


113 


children in that big city had never been 
to a party before. And now it is almost 
nine o’clock and time that my boy was 
fast asleep. Good-night . 9 9 

Mother kissed him and blew ont the 
light, and went down-stairs. 

Now in all the almost eight years of 
Toggles ’s life he had never heard of a 
birthday that had not meant a party, 
and presents, and a birthday cake with 
candles — unless it was a grown-up 
birthday and usually even grown-ups 
had such things. And so the idea of 
a boy or a girl who had never even been 
to a party, any sort of a party, was 
quite terrible. To be sure Mother’s 
story was about something that hap- 
pened a long time ago; but perhaps — 
who could tell? — there might be chil- 


114 : 


TOGGLES 


dren in the world now who had never 
been to a party. He wondered if there 
were and who they could be. Perhaps 
some of those “ fresh-air ” children, 
whom Mr. McEae had told them about 
and whom grandpa was some day going 
to take him to see. They lived in a big 
;city, like the beggar children in the 
story, and just then, so quick and sud- 
den that he sat straight up in bed — Tog- 
gles had an idea. 

“I’ll do it,” he exclaimed; but then 
he remembered that there was no one to 
hear what he said ; so, without explain- 
ing what he would do, he lay down and 
went fast asleep. 

All the next morning he was thinking 
about his plan but not a word did he 
say until dinner was over and he and 


MABEL’S PARTY 


115 


Grandpa and Grandma were in the 
surrey on their way to the camp. Then 
he asked Grandpa a question : 

“ Grandpa,” he said, “do you suppose 
there are any of those children who 
never went to a party ?” 

“I should not be at all surprised,” 
answered Grandpa. 

“And how many of them are there ?” 

“I saw the man who has charge of the 
camp yesterday and he told me there 
were about fifty.” 

“Well, Grandpa,” exclaimed Tog- 
gles, “do you think we could invite 
them for Mabel’s party? Fifty is a 
good many.” 

“I think it would be a very nice 
thing,” answered Grandpa, and Grand- 
ma said so, too. 


116 


TOGGLES 


They stayed all the afternoon at the 
4 ‘fresh-air” camp and the grown folks 
learned about the children and their 
homes, and how they had been brought 
from the dust and heat of the city to 
live for two weeks in the country, which 
some of them had never even seen be- 
fore in all their lives. 

Most of the children were little girls, 
older to be sure than Mabel, but they 
seemed like very nice little girls and the 
three young women and the young man 
in charge of the camp said that they 
were. There were also three specially 
trustworthy boys who helped with the 
work and Toggles played with them 
and went swimming with them and had 
a fine time. Before they left for home, 
he went up to the young man who was 


MABEL’S PARTY 


117 


the head of the camp and asked him if 
at supper time he would invite all the 
children to come to the farm for Mabel’s 
birthday party on the next Friday. 

When I think of trying to tell you 
about that party, it seems perfectly 
hopeless. I simply could not tell you 
all about it for, if I did, there would be 
no room left to tell about anything else. 
But I can tell you some. The children 
came in two hay-racks at three o’clock 
and they stayed until seven, which is 
not so very long, but plenty of time for 
fifty children to do a great many things. 

They played drop-the-handkerchief, 
and ring-around-a-rosy, and sheep-in- 
fold, and pull-away. Grandpa let them 
slide down one of the haystacks and 


118 


TOGGLES 


there they played shooting the chutes; 
there were foot-races, and jumping, and 
a three-legged race, which was almost 
the most fun of all. Oh, yes, and they 
played follow-the-leader and London 
Bridge. And then there was supper, 
with such berries as you never buy in 
boxes and such cream as no city wagon 
ever carried and, instead of a big birth- 
day cake, fifty little cakes with a candle 
on each one. After supper the man 
who was head of the camp had the chil- 
dren sing some of their songs, and go 
through their gymnastic drill, and some 
of them spoke pieces, and one of the 
ladies told two lovely stories, and when 
they were all on the hay-racks again, 
they began to give their yells. 


MABEL’S PARTY 


119 


As they drove down the road, fifty 
voices were shouting : 

“What’s the matter with Mabel and 
Toggles t 

“ They’re all right! 

“ Who’s all right! 

“ Mabel and Toggles !” 

Then they yelled for Martha, who 
had come from the camp so that she 
could be there, too, and for Grandpa, 
and for Grandma, and for Chris, who 
had swung them in the big swing, and 
the last thing that Toggles and Mabel 
heard was those fifty shrill voices, 
cheering for the haystacks and the 
pigs. 

That night, when Toggles lay snug in 


120 


TOGGLES 


bed and mother again sat beside him in 
her little rocking-chair and Mabel was 
fast asleep, Toggles suddenly ex- 
claimed : 

“ Mother, do you remember that story 
you told me about the king who gave 
the party to the lame men, and the blind 
men, and the little beggar children. 
Well, I’ve got some more of that story; 
it’s partly made up but I think it’s true. 
Shall I tell it to you?” 

“Yes,” answered mother. “You tell 
it to me.” 

“All right. Well, when they had all 
gone home, and had had such a good 
time, and the king had had such a very, 
very good time, he sat down on his 
throne and took his crown off and he 
said, ‘Well, well, who would have 



“WHAT'S THE MATTER WITH MABEL AND TOGGLES t” “THEY'RE 
ALL RIGHT!” — Page 119. 






























































































































































































MABEL’S PARTY 


121 


thought I could have enjoyed myself so 
much! It was really the best party I 
ever had. And my next party, I’m go- 
ing to invite those folks the very first 
ones. ’ And — and that ’s all. ’ ’ 


CHAPTER XII 

THE SMILE-HOLES 

T HE next day was not altogether 
happy. For one thing, Toggles 
had had a stomach-ache a good share of 
the night. To be sure, he could under- 
stand just how he came by it: he had 
eaten all he could hold at Mabel’s party 
— most of them had done that — and 
then, right after they had eaten, they 
had had another game of sheep-in-fold 
and Toggles had “ stood” and he had had 
to run hard and long ; that quite likely 
had given him the stomach-ache, at least 
so Grandma thought, but knowing the 


122 


THE SMILE-HOLES 


123 


reason did not of course make it hurt 
any less. 

Far worse than that was Mother’s 
not being well. She could not get up 
for breakfast, in fact she did not eat any 
breakfast. She was just tired, she said, 
and wanted to lie perfectly still and 
Toggles knew she had not eaten too 
much birthday cake and her being in 
bed again, when they had all thought 
she was getting on so well, was pretty 
discouraging. 

But even that might not have de- 
pressed Toggles, it took a good deal to 
depress him, if it had not been for the 
little things — somehow they often irri- 
tate more than the big ones. At break- 
fast he made a mistake and set the 
cream-pitcher down on top of the but- 


124 


TOGGLES 


ter-dish and spilled all the cream. 
Grandma was always nice about such 
things but he knew nobody wants 
spots on a clean table-cloth. Grandma 
thought he was not well enough to go 
with Chris on the load of hay. That 
was a disappointment but he went out- 
doors with his sling-shot — and his very 
first shot broke a rubber. He fixed it 
as well as he could and then the other 
broke. You would have almost said 
that it broke on purpose. Of course it 
didn’t but it looked that way. So Tog- 
gles was quite down-hearted. 

He went into the tool-house and sat 
down on a box beside the bench where 
Grandpa was working and Grandpa 
could see that, if he had been Mabel, he 
would have been crying. Being a boy, 


THE SMILE-HOLES 


125 


Toggles could not of course do that but 
sometimes, once in a great while, he 
wished he could. 

“ How’s the stomach-ache?” asked 
Grandpa. 

“ Better,” answered Toggles, soberly. 

Grandpa hammered hard on the rivet 
that was to hold a new tooth in the 
mower. A mowing-machine, he had ex- 
plained to Toggles, can’t get its teeth 
filled ; when one is broken, it just has to 
have a new one and to-day Grandpa was 
being a sort of dentist. 

“ Where’s your sling-shot?” he in- 
quired. 

“I broke it,” returned Toggles, 
gravely. 

6 6 That ’s too bad, ’ ’ said Grandpa. 6 6 1 
wonder if we could fix it. There was 


126 


TOGGLES 


another rubber around here some- 
where.’ ’ 

“I know,” said Toggles. But he did 
not make any move to get it, nor take 
the broken sling-shot out of his pocket. 
Grandpa, who had now given the mow- 
ing-machine its new tooth, could see 
that the matter was serious. 

He took Toggles’s hand and together 
they crossed the yard to the spring- 
house. Grandpa pumped a basin of 
water, washed his hands and face and 
stood rubbing them dry in front of the 
little mirror that hung on a nail against 
the outside wall. Toggles stood watch- 
ing with no particular interest, when all 
at once Grandpa put his face close to the 
looking-glass and widened his mouth 
out until it seemed to stretch almost 


THE SMILE-HOLES 


127 


across his face. It looked so funny 
that, if Toggles had not been feeling 
down-hearted, he would have laughed. 

“Can you do that?” asked Grandpa, 
solemnly, passing the mirror to Toggles. 

Toggles took it and tried. He could 
widen his mouth out pretty far — not, of 
course, as far as Grandpa could. 

“What does it do to your face?” 
asked Grandpa. 

“Why,” Toggles ? s mouth was wid- 
ened until it almost hurt and he was 
feeling of his hard, sun-burned little 
cheeks. “Why, it makes those two 
round holes, one at each corner of my 
mouth.” 

“It looks — ” Grandpa spoke slowly 
and hesitatingly. “It looks as if you 
were smiling.” 


128 


TOGGLES 


“Yes,” Toggles admitted, “it does.” 

And, when he said it, his face looked 
more than ever as if he were smiling. 

“See if you can make those holes and 
not smile,” Grandpa suggested. 

Toggles tried it, but the minute he 
made those holes his face looked as if 
he were smiling and he was smiling. 

“Isn’t it funny!” he exclaimed. 

“I have never known anybody,” de- 
clared Grandpa, “who could make those 
holes in his cheeks without smiling or 
who could smile without feeling i smiley’ 
inside. How is it with you? Do you 
feel that way? Or don’t you?” 

Toggles thought hard for a moment. 

“I believe I do,” he confessed. “Ah 
— kind of.” 


THE SMILE-HOLES 


129 


“ Try making those holes again,” di- 
rected Grandpa. 

Toggles did, and this time it was so 
funny that he laughed outright. 

“ Why, when you open those holes the 
smiles just pop out,” he exclaimed, 
“and then you can’t help feeling 
happy.” 

“I’ve noticed,” said Grandpa, “that 
smiles cheer up the people who smile 
them and they cheer up those who only 
see them but, if you don’t open the holes 
where they live, how can they ever get 
out?” 

Three Plymouth Rock hens near the 
watering-trough seemed to get word of 
something, for they set off in great ex- 
citement and Toggles looked up to see 


130 


TOGGLES 


what it was all about. Grandma had 
stepped from the kitchen door with a 
plate of scraps and the chickens were 
coming from every direction. 

“Look, Grandpa,” he exclaimed. 
“Look at Grandma’s cheeks! Why, 
she doesn’t have to open the smile-holes. 
They are there, all the time and, really, 
she is smiling all the time.” 

“That’s so,” Grandpa exclaimed, 
“and, do you know, I believe Grandma 
feels happy all the time. That is what 
the smile-holes will do, if a person when 
he is little just forms the habit and 
opens them ever so often. It’s quite 
important.” 

And, as Toggles and Grandpa walked 
hand in hand toward the house, Toggles 
had a deep smile-hole in each cheek. 


CHAPTER XIII 


THE DOWNTRODDEN CITY 

I T sounds unreasonable to say that 
there was a city right on the farm 
that Toggles had never seen and yet 
that is perfectly true, a city that he did 
not see for a month, a busy city, with 
citizens hurrying to and fro in its 
streets and popping in and out of their 
strange houses and all as active and as 
busy as could be and as happy, appar- 
ently, as busy people commonly are. 

Toggles might have seen it any time. 
It had been there ever since he came to 
the farm and for long before but some- 
how he had overlooked it until one day 


131 


132 


TOGGLES 


when he was playing ball with Johnny 
and the ball went past him into the field 
across the road. He ran to get it and 
was hardly over the fence before he 
stumbled and, when he turned around, 
there lay a fourth part of the city little 
better than a ruin and Toggles ex- 
claimed : 

‘ 6 My ! What a big ant-hill ! ’ ’ 

There was a perfect panic among the 
inhabitants whose houses had been de- 
stroyed and they were all running about 
as if distracted, except a few who kept 
cool and were carrying away and hiding 
some little white things that looked like 
tiny grains of rice. Toggles did not 
stop. He hurried off to finish the game. 
Still it interested him and, when Johnny 
had gone home, he came back. 


TEE DOWNTRODDEN CITY 133 


All the little white things had been 
put away, the panic seemed to be over 
and it looked as if the citizens had 
bravely resolved to build everything up 
again, just as quickly and as well as 
they could. Toggles watched them 
working and, as he watched, he began 
to think and the thinking did not make 
him feel any more comfortable. 

Fifteen minutes ago they had all been 
happy, each family had its own little 
house (a dirt house, to be sure, but some 
people had no better) and each citizen 
was free to go about his own business or 
pleasure. Now all that was over. A 
fourth part of them were homeless, the 
rest must all turn in and help their un- 
fortunate neighbors. It might take 
weeks, for all he knew, to repair the in- 


134 


TOGGLES 


jury and he, Toggles, had made all the 
trouble. True enough, he had not 
meant to, he would not have thought of 
doing such a thing on purpose but the 
ants did not know that; for all they 
knew, the very thing for which he 
crossed the road might have been to 
kick their town to pieces. 

He tried to imagine how he would 
feel if a great giant as tall as fourteen 
trees should clumsily stumble over the 
schoolhouse at home, and the new Con- 
gregational Church, and twenty houses 
and leave nothing of them but brick- 
dust and slivers. It would, he felt sure, 
scare him almost to death. 

He wished he could make it up to the 
ants but he could not think what to do. 
The ball began the trouble but it had 


TEE DOWNTRODDEN CITY 135 


not meant to do it any more than he 
had, and, even if he burned it up, that 
would not do the ants any good. As to 
helping them repair their streets and 
houses, Toggles knew perfectly well 
that he was not smart enough for that. 

Just then he spied Grandpa coming 
from the hay-field and ran across the 
road and told him all about it. He 
knew, of course, that it was not any 
such great matter as if it had been an 
injury done to people, but those ants 
weren’t the kind that got into the 
pantry. They had never done Toggles 
any harm and he wanted to make things 
right with them. 

Grandpa understood and was per- 
fectly serious when he told him about it. 

“I see,” he said, “you have harmed 


136 


TOGGLES 


the city and you want to make it up. 
There is only one thing to do — you 
must pay an indemnity.” 

“A what?” asked Toggles. 

“An indemnity — something like a 
ransom, you know; — and, if I were in 
your place, I would pay it right now. 
It is a serious thing to owe everybody 
in a whole city.” 

“I know it,” returned Toggles, “but 
what shall I pay? I spent all my 
money for the ball and, anyway, they 
wouldn’t want money.” 

“No,” said Grandpa, “it would have 
to be something ants like. Let me see 
— sugar, I should say. And I wouldn’t 
ask Grandma for it, I would earn it. I 
believe if you sprinkle her flowers 
right now and then promise to sprinkle 


THE DOWNTRODDEN CITY 137 

them again to-morrow, she will give you 
two spoonfuls of sugar and that, I think, 
would be enough so that every one in 
the city could have some.” 

Toggles raced into the house and 
Grandpa was right. Grandma was 
quite willing to make such a bargain. 
As soon as the flowers had been watered, 
she gave him the sugar and he hurried 
back to the city and, sitting down, emp- 
tied his indemnity just outside the city 
limits. There were not many inhab- 
itants on that side but their attention 
was instantly caught. A big, black, 
alderman ant came up to examine the 
nearest sugar-grain, then seized it and 
some others, encouraged by his example, 
each took a grain and started off. 

In five minutes every one in the city 


138 


TOGGLES 


had heard the news but the mayor and 
council appeared to have taken charge ; 
all was done with such perfect order 
and system. First the sugar in the 
streets was gathered up, then the scat- 
tered grains collected and finally, the 
laborers, going and coming in regular 
files, began their work upon the big cen- 
tral heap itself. 

Toggles had never imagined anything 
so interesting ; and he lay flat upon his 
stomach, watching every new move 
until the sun was overhead and across 
the road he heard Grandma ringing the 
dinner-bell. 

Mother had not been able to sit up all 
day but she was ready for a visit that 
night and when Toggles went in at bed 
time, he told her all about the down- 


TEE DOWNTRODDEN CITY 139 

trodden city, and the indemnity that he 
had paid and that they had so gratefully 
accepted. 

“And now,” he demanded, “do you 
know what I am going to do?” 

Mother did not, though he gave her 
three guesses. 

“Well, I have been talking some 
more with Grandpa about it and he says 
there is something that big countries 
sometimes do for little ones : they 
establish a protectorate. And that’s 
what I’m going to do for the ants. 
And you remember when we were look- 
ing at pictures in the big history book ? 
And the funny flag we found, with the 
snake on it, and that said, ‘Don’t tread 
on me’? Well, I’m going to have that 
for the ants’ flag and I’m going to put 


140 


TOGGLES 


it up over the city where the ants live, 
so that there won’t any other boy step 
on the city the way I did. Could you 
help me make the flag? When you’re 
better, I mean?” 

Mother thought she could and later, 
one day, she did, and after that the city 
was downtrodden no more for it had 
found a powerful friend and protector. 


CHAPTER XIV 

THE U WHY” OF THE WEEDS 

D URING the days while Mother 
was not able to be up and about 
the house, Toggles and Grandpa were 
together a great deal and they grew to 
be very well acquainted. Every day, 
too, Toggles was learning more about 
the farm. 

Some of the things, like the time for 
milking, and the names of the flowers, 
and the way to the woods and the creek, 
he had learned right off and easily ; but 
there were other things that were hard, 
things he had to think about and “ phi- 
losophize’ ’ over with Grandpa and then 


141 


142 


TOGGLES 


think about some more, before he un- 
derstood them very well, and one of 
these things was the weeds. 

It was not because he had not had 
plenty of chance to get acquainted with 
them, for there were all kinds of them, 
pigweed, and ragweed, and chickweed, 
and a hundred other varieties and they 
had all been on the farm long before 
Toggles ever saw them there. In fact 
they were there, so Grandpa said, long 
before ever he came, and of course there 
was no use of going back farther than 
that; but the “why” was a different 
question. 

Perhaps the wrong start made it 
harder and this was the way that hap- 
pened. 

They were hoeing together in the gar- 


THE “WHY” OF THE WEEDS 143 


den (for of course Toggles worked some, 
I would not have you think he just 
played all summer), and it was very 
hot, and almost dinner-time, and the 
hoeing was hard. 

‘ 4 They bother a good deal, don’t they, 
Grandpa?” panted Toggles, stopping a 
moment to fan himself with his straw 
hat and wonder when the dinner-bell 
would ring. 

“Like sixty,” said Grandpa, which 
was about as near to slang as he ever 
came. 

Now, of course Toggles did not like 
to be bothered himself nor to have any 
one else bothered. It did not seem 
right that they should be and so — 

“Are weeds just ~bad, Grandpa?” he 
asked. 


144 


TOGGLES 


“Mighty bad, 7 ’ said Grandpa, hoeing 
harder than ever ; and it was not until 
after dinner, when they were sitting 
down to rest a little while before they 
went back to work, that he really un- 
derstood what Toggles had meant, for 
this time the question was : 

“Grandpa, why did God make the 
weeds ? 77 

Then Grandpa tried to explain that 
the weeds, just by themselves, were not 
really bad — he had not meant that — but 
they were bad to have growing in a gar- 
den. Weeds would look better grow- 
ing out of the bare ground than nothing 
at all there. Some weeds, like smart- 
weed and mustard, were useful for some 
things; other weeds were useful, prob- 
ably, only we had not found out yet just 


THE “WHY” OF THE WEEDS 145 

what they were useful for; some day 
perhaps we would. 

“And some weeds simply need to be 
trained,” Grandpa went on; “they have 
grown had just as some boys do, be- 
cause there was no one to look after 
them, and they can be made good again. 
Now, out in California, there is a man 
named Mr. Burbank — ” 

“Mother has told me about him,” said 
Toggles. 

“And he has taken the burdock, 
which is one of the very meanest weeds 
we have, you know how we have cut 
them down and dug them out and they 
simply won’t die, and he has trained it 
until he has made it so good that people 
can eat it and like it as well as pars- 
nips.” 


146 


TOGGLES 


They talked about it quite a while it 
was so interesting, and for a long time 
after that the “why” of the weeds did 
not bother Toggles any more. Then 
one sultry, sticky day, when he and 
Grandpa had been hoeing until they 
were both so tired that they had gone 
to rest for a little while under the 
maples, Toggles suddenly sat straight 
up to ask : 

“Grandpa, why did God let ’em grow 
there? Why didn’t he just let ’em 
grow where they would do good and not 
any harm?” 

“We would not have to hoe them out 
if they did not grow there, would we?” 
said Grandpa. 

“No. That’s what I mean.” 

Grandpa let his hand slide from Tog- 


THE “WHY” OF THE WEEDS 147 

gles’s shoulder down to his arm, and 
Toggles doubled his fist and brought it 
up to his chin, which was the way he 
always did when any one wanted to 
feel his muscle. 

“ There’s more there than when you 
first came to the farm,” said Grandpa. 

“I should say there was!” Toggles 
answered. 

“And some of it came from hoeing 
weeds.” 

Toggles had not thought of that be- 
fore. 

“Then, there is another thing,” 
Grandpa went on. “I don’t know 
whether I can make it quite plain, but 
stirring up the ground around the roots 
of the plants make it easier for them to 
drink the rain. If the ground is not 


148 


TOGGLES 


stirred up, the water makes for itself 
little pipes and runs away through 
them almost too fast for the little root- 
lets to drink it. So, you see, hoeing the 
weeds out makes the ground better for 
the corn, and the potatoes, and the other 
things to grow in ; and if the weeds did 
not come, we might not hoe the ground 
at all, almost surely we would not hoe 
it so much ; and, if we did not hoe it, the 
things we wanted to have grow would 
get very thirsty. They might even 
die.” 

Toggles thought a good while, for 
really it was a little complicated. 

“Then we might even say,” he sug- 
gested, turning to see if Grandpa agreed 
with him, “we might even say that it 


THE “WHY” OF THE WEEDS 149 


was the weeds that made the garden 
grow.” 

“They help,” said Grandpa, “in that 
one way. And,” he added, “when we 
find other bothersome things growing in 
the world, we must not decide right 
away because we see them there that we 
must leave them to grow. May be God 
put them there just so we and other 
people could grow stronger and better 
and happier by pulling them up.” 


CHAPTER XV, 

THE SPIN NEBS 

I T was a fine thing for Toggles when 
he became acquainted with J ohnny, 
for of course J ohnny knew a great deal 
more about all the region than Toggles 
did, having lived there all his life, but 
even J ohnny had never before taken the 
walk they took on this particular after- 
noon. Starting from Johnny’s house, 
which was across the orchard, two fields 
and the wood-lot, they followed the lit- 
tle creek, wading part of the time, down 
to where it empties into the big creek 
and there, right on the bridge you cross 


150 


TEE SPINNERS 


151 


when you go to town, they found the 
spinners. 

“I never saw so many before at one 
time. Did you?” exclaimed Toggles. 

“No,” answered Johnny. “What 
shall we do with them?” 

“I don’t know.” 

For a long time now they had known 
just what to do about birds, and ants, 
and toads, and frogs, and mosquitoes 
(you always killed mosquitoes) but 
about spiders it never had been settled, 
and here was a whole bridge fairly 
swarming with them — a thousand, Tog- 
gles said, and they actually counted 
sixty before they got tired ; spiders with 
fat, black bodies, as big as a good-sized 
hazel-nut, with awkward-looking, wiry 
legs and an array of webs that made the 


152 


TOGGLES 


whole bridge look as if the fairies had 
been using it for clothes-bars. They 
never had seen anything like it before. 

“ Let’s snap ’em off into the creek,” 
suggested Johnny; “may be some fish 
will jump for ’em.” 

“Let’s think about it first,” said Tog- 
gles; “may be they’re helping us some 
way — like Grandpa showed us the toads 
were.” 

“Helping!” snorted Johnny, quite 
scornfully. “Don’t they make cob- 
webs all over where they ought not to ? 
Doesn’t your grandma drive out every 
one that gets into the house ? My 
mother does.” 

“Yes, that’s so,” answered Toggles, 
“but these aren’t making cobwebs 
where they ought not. Nobody ever 


THE SPINNERS 


153 


dusts a bridge, and I think it even 
makes it look prettier to have cobwebs 
on it, ’specially when there’s dew on ’em 
like there must be early in the morning. 
You know yourself how pretty they 
look on the grass. Besides, spiders 
catch flies, and I guess your mother 
drives out flies every single day.” 

“But spiders bite folks,” retorted 
Johnny. “My brother had a spider 
bite on his foot once, right between the 
toes — we always thought it was a spider 
— and it got awful sore, and he couldn’t 
walk on it for ’most a month.” 

“Was that this kind of a spider*?” 
asked Toggles. 

“I don’t know.” 

“May be it was a different kind of a 
spider, and may be there are some good 


154 


TOGGLES 


kinds of spiders and some bad kinds.” 

“How do you mean?” 

“Well, like there are of bugs. 
There are lady-bugs, that Grandpa says 
don’t hurt things, and really are kind 
of pretty, and then there’s potato-bugs 
that we’ve been fighting ’most all the 
summer and still they are spoiling the 
potato-vines. May be it’s that way. ” 

“I don’t believe there are any good 
kinds of spiders.” 

It looked as if Johnny were getting 
the better of the argument, Toggles had 
used so many “may bes” but just then 
there came to him a new idea and he 
said: 

“Let’s watch ’em.” 

So they watched them. There was 
a big fellow just in front of them who 


THE SPINNERS 


155 


seemed to be repairing bis web, one 
strand was loose, and it was very inter- 
esting to see bow deftly bis crawly- 
looking legs (or perhaps they were 
arms) gathered it up and rolled it into 
a ball. 

“Lots better than we could do it,” as 
Johnny said. 

Then Johnny went farther down the 
bridge and in a moment he called back : 

“Come. Come here, guick. Aw, 
you’ve missed it.” 

And when Toggles wanted to know 
what he had missed, Johnny explained 
that just that moment a honey-bee — 
“may be it was one of your grandpa’s” 
— had gotten tangled in the web and was 
making a dreadful ado about it, when 
out rushed the spider from the center 


156 


TOGGLES 


of the web and cut the strand loose, so 
that he flew away. 

“I guess the spider was afraid of 
Mrs. Bee,” exclaimed Johnny. 

“Or, may be,” suggested Toggles, 
“may be they were friends and he had 
not meant to catch him, but it was just 
an accident, like a hunter setting a trap 
and may be catching a dog.” 

“May be,” assented Johnny. 

They must have stood for a half-hour, 
watching the many spiders and finding 
out no end of new and curious things 
about them. Meanwhile they had for- 
gotten all about snapping them off into 
the creek but, when they were half-way 
home, another idea came to Toggles. 

“I’ll tell you,” he exclaimed, “I don’t 
know surely, but I believe those spiders 


THE SPINNERS 


157 


are helping us after all. Do you re- 
member the night Grandpa took us out 
rowing, down on the big creek ? In Mr. 
Smith’s boat?” 

Of course Johnny remembered. 

“Well, you know how the little flies 
were swarming there, just like a snow- 
storm, and you swallowed one?” 

They both chuckled, for it had been 
very funny. 

“Well, I just believe those spiders 
have made their webs there on the 
bridge to catch those flies.” 

It looked reasonable, and when Tog- 
gles reached home, he told the whole 
story to Grandpa. 

“Of course, I ’pi not sure,” he ex- 
plained, “because I never thought of it 
until we were on the way home and then 


158 


TOGGLES 


we didn’t remember surely if we had 
seen any of that kind of flies caught in 
the webs or not and we were too tired 
to go back and look, but I think that was 
it and, anyway, it was very interesting 
watching those spiders.” 

“I really don’t know surely, either,” 
answered Grandpa, “but, as you say, it 
looks so. I am very sure, though, that 
you did the right thing, for when you 
see any kind of animals, little or big, 
the one thing that you can always be 
certain about is that they want to keep 
on living, and so it is never a good plan 
to kill them unless there is a very good 
reason for it and a very sure reason.” 


CHAPTER XYI 

THE “PROMISSORY” BIRTHDAY 

S OMETIMES it seems as if one im- 
portant thing is hardly out of the 
way before another one just as impor- 
tant or more so comes up to take its 
place, and a person must begin right 
away to think and to plan and some- 
times worry a little bit about that. 
You may not have found it so, but Tog- 
gles did. Mabel’s birthday was past 
and had been a complete success, and 
here was Mother’s birthday coming and 
what was to be done about that? 

It was in the tool-house that he and 
Grandpa had most of their week-day 

159 


160 


TOGGLES 


conferences (on Sundays it was usually 
in the hammock) and, if you had been 
one of the chickens outside the door, and 
could have heard what was said, you 
would have appreciated how serious 
were some of the matters that they 
talked over. 

“I don’t s’pose she is well enough for 
a party,” Toggles hesitated. 

“I am afraid not,” answered 
Grandpa. 

There was no need to say more about 
that, it only made them both sad to re- 
member that Mother was not getting 
well as fast as they had hoped she 
would. 

“But of course we can give her pres- 
ents just the same,” suggested Toggles. 

“Certainly.” 


THE “PROMISSORY” BIRTHDAY 161 

“You know, Grandpa, I’ve thought 
a good deal about that. I would like to 
give her something very expensive, like 
a gold watch or a diamond ring, or 
something like that. Only of course 
she has a watch and she likes the ring 
Papa gave her better than she would 
any other, no matter how much it 
cost; and, anyhow, I haven’t very much 
money. Not nearly enough to buy jew- 
elry or anything like that.” 

“I don’t believe Mother would care 
a great deal for jewelry,” commented 
Grandpa. 

“May be Mother wouldn’t. There’s 
candy, though. She likes that — a little. 
I might get her a big box of candy.” 

“Yes.” Grandpa stopped to drive a 
nail into the new chicken-coop he was 


162 


TOGGLES 


making. “But I never saw Mother 
with a box of candy that she didn’t give 
away a great deal more of than she ate 
herself.” 

Toggles nodded. He had noticed 
that, too, now that he stopped to think. 

“Besides,” Grandpa went on to say, 
“Grandma, you know, is planning to 
have chicken for dinner, with custard 
for dessert— nutmeg on top and in the 
little glass bowls, you know; and then 
for supper warm biscuit and maple 
syrup, and I really believe Mother likes 
custard and maple syrup better than 
she does candy.” 

4 6 Grandpa, ’ 9 exclaimed Toggles, 
“what would you get her — if you had 
thirty-eight cents? What can I buy 
that she would really like?” 


THE “PROMISSORY” BIRTHDAY 163 

Grandpa laid down his hammer and 
very seriously gave his whole attention 
to the matter. 

“Why do you buy her anything?” he 
asked. 

“Why, Grandpa, I’ve got to give her 
something — that is, of course, I haven’t 
got to but — ” 

“You wouldn’t need to buy it.” 

“No — o. I could make her some- 
thing, may be. But would that be as 
nice?” 

“I think it would be nicer, if you 
made what I am thinking about.” 

“What is it?” Toggles demanded. 

“Well,” answered Grandpa, “I 
wouldn’t think first about the thirty- 
eight cents. I would begin by saying to 
myself, ‘What can I give that would 


164 


TOGGLES 


please Mother the most'?’ And I think 
I know.” 

“What is it?” 

“Sometimes,” Grandpa began, “I 
have heard Mother say, ‘It’s time to go 
to bed now,’ or ‘Can’t you let Mabel 
play with the blocks for a little while?’ 
or ‘Better put your shoes on now,’ when 
you had been barefoot, you know; and 
always, of course, you did what Mother 
asked you to do but you did not always 
do it right off and as if you wanted to 
do it.” 

“I know,” admitted Toggles. 

It was not at all a pleasant topic to 
talk about and he did not see what it 
could possibly have to do with Mother’s 
birthday. 

“Well, now,” Grandpa continued, “I 


THE “PROMISSORY” BIRTHDAY 165 

know, because I was a father long be- 
fore I was a grandfather, that there is 
nothing that makes fathers and mothers 
so happy as to have their children mind 
right off , and as if they enjoyed it even 
more than having their own way.” 

“I know, Grandpa,” Toggles con- 
fessed, “and I mean to mind that way, 
always, but, you see, I forget — ” 

“I know just how that is,” Grandpa 
conceded ; “you see I was a boy even be- 
fore I was a father and that’s where the 
present comes in. Do you remember 
the day we bought the pigs of Mr. Sa- 
low? And the piece of paper I gave 
him, that I told you was a promissory 
note?” 

Toggles nodded. He remembered 
all about it. 


166 


TOGGLES 


“Now, if I should forget that I owe 
Mr. Salow that thirty dollars, he would 
just show me that piece of paper and 
I would remember and pay him. What 
if you gave Mother, for her birthday, 
something that she could show you — 
Well, say you and Mabel were fussing 
a little bit — you know sometimes you 
do; and suppose Mabel were all in the 
wrong — you know sometimes she is. 
Mother might show you your present 
and you would stop, right then and 
there, and give Mabel the croquet- 
mallet, or the next turn in the swing, or 
whatever it was, not because Mabel de- 
served it but because that would be 
your birthday present to Mother and 
you would know that it would please 
Mother to have no more fussing.” 


THE “PROMISSORY” BIRTHDAY 167 

It seemed like a good idea. They 
talked a long while about it and then, 
after supper, Toggles told Grandma 
and she, too, thought it was a fine plan. 

It certainly was a great surprise to 
Mother. She never guessed one thing 
about it and, even when she found it on 
the tray on which they carried in her 
breakfast, and was unwinding the tis- 
sue-paper wrapping, she had no idea 
what was inside. 

What came out of the wrapping was 
a little booklet, such as Toggles had 
learned to make in school, with a heavy, 
gray paper cover, the end tied with a 
bow of blue ribbon, and lettered : 

FOR MOTHER, FROM TOGGLES. 

She opened it and found it contained 


168 


TOGGLES 


twelve little white slips, carefully per- 
forated along one edge with a pin, so 
that they could easily he torn out, and 
on each slip, written just as carefully 
as a seven-year-old boy could write it, 
were these words: 


GOOD FOR ONE CHEERFUL MINDING. 
PAYABLE PROMPTLY ON DEMAND. 

TOGGLES. 


And the best of it was, every one of 
them was paid exactly as agreed. 
Mother said that she never in her life 
had had a better birthday present. 


CHAPTER XVII 

THE WEED THAT GOT STARTED 

I HAVE thought a great deal about 
this story. Sometimes I have 
thought I would tell it to you and some- 
times I have thought I would not. 

“If I tell it,” I have said to myself, 
“perhaps they won’t like Toggles so well 
— and I wouldn’t want that to happen. 

“Yes, but,” the next minute I would 
be saying again, “it really happened — 
just as much as any of the other things. 
Perhaps the boys and girls who read 
this book ought to know about it : per- 
haps it might possibly help them.” 

169 


170 


TOGGLES 


So finally I have decided to tell it but 
to leave out all the unpleasant part ex- 
cept the last. 

Outside the carriage-house Toggles 
and Mabel were playing and inside 
Grandpa was working. I think he was 
oiling a harness, anyway, it was some- 
thing that did not make any noise, and 
they did not know he was there. If 
they had known, things might have been 
different for people were nearly always 
happy where Grandpa was and Toggles 
and Mabel were not happy. They said 
things to each other that I am not going 
to tell you about and they did things to 
each other — Mabel stuck out her tongue 
and Toggles made up a face — It was 
really quite disgraceful — ! And then 


TEE WEED TEAT GOT STARTED 171 

Mabel went into the bouse to find 
Grandma and Toggles wandered about 
the yard, feeling uncomfortable and not 
knowing just wbat to do until Grandpa 
came out and asked : 

“ Would you like to help me pull a 
few weeds f” 

Toggles was very glad to. He would 
have been glad to do anything Grandpa 
had suggested, if only to free his mind 
from some unpleasant thoughts he was 
thinking. 

“ We ’ll go over into this corner,” 
Grandpa went on and they climbed the 
fence into the cornfield. 

They had been working perhaps fif- 
teen minutes, when Toggles called : 

‘ 6 Grandpa, here’s one that I can’t 
pull.” 


172 


TOGGLES 


44 Can’t you,” Grandpa answered and 
lie came to look. 

It was in the fence-corner among the 
grass and it was one of the kind that 
Grandpa called 44 brush.” 

4 4 Well, now, that’s strange,” he ex- 
claimed. 4 4 Just try again ! Pull hard. ’ ’ 

Toggles caught hold with both hands 
and pulled until his face was all red 
and the drops of sweat stood out upon 
his forehead, but it would not come. 

4 4 Well, now, that’s strange!” Grand- 
pa repeated. 44 I feel almost sure you 
could have pulled it when you first 
came to the farm and you are bigger 
and stronger now than you were then.” 

Toggles had to stop pulling to laugh. 
Grandpa was always saying funny 
things like that. 


THE WEED THAT GOT STARTED 173 

“Yes, I 7 mow, Grandpa,” lie ex- 
claimed. “But the weed was smaller 
then. Now it’s big and — ” 

“That’s so,” said Grandpa, as if such 
an idea had never occurred to him be- 
fore, “and, come to think of it, that re- 
minds me of a sort of story about my 
brother James and me, that I might tell 
you sometime.” 

“Couldn’t you — ?” Toggles began. 

But just that minute they heard the 
dinner-bell. 

When dinner was over and they were 
sitting together in the hammock for 
their noonday rest, Toggles reminded 
Grandpa of the story and Grandpa’s 
answer proved to be most extraordinary. 
Grandpa’s answers often were. 

“I think I will tell you,” he said, 


174 


TOGGLES 


slowly, “but, really, it is something 
that I am almost ashamed to tell.” 

“Why, Grandpa!” exclaimed Tog- 
gles. “Then it can’t be a true story.” 

“Yes, it is; that’s the worst part of 
it. Do you know who my brother 
James is?” 

“He’s my great-uncle James — the 
professor in the big school where they 
teach boys to be farmers.” 

“That’s right. Well, he was two 
years younger than I was and when we 
were little I wasn’t always kind to 
him.” 

“Why, Grandpa!” Toggles exclaimed 
again, for this was certainly the most 
amazing talk he had ever heard. 
“Why, Uncle James has visited at our 
house and he’s told me stories about you, 


TEE WEED TEAT GOT STARTED 175 

when yon and he were little, and he says 
yon were very, very kind to him. He 
said, if you had not stayed on the farm 
and worked and sent him money, he 
never could have gone to school and 
been a professor.” 

“ Perhaps that’s true,” Grandpa 
acknowledged, “but my story is true, 
too. You see, it was this way: while 
we were small, I found out some ways 
of talking and acting that I knew both- 
ered my little brother ; and of course he 
didn’t like it, so, after a while, he found 
out some little things that bothered me 
and (this is the part I am most ashamed 
of) — it lasted. 

“If Uncle James were here to-day, I 
know just how I could bother him and 
he knows just how he could bother me.” 


176 


TOGGLES 


“But you wouldn’t do it,” insisted 
Toggles. 

“No,” answered Grandpa, “because 
we’ve both learned better and we would 
be very careful not to ; but we could and 
both of us wish we had never learned 
how. You see, it’s like your weed. It 
would have been easy for us to forget 
how to tease each other when we were 
small, but now it’s too late and we can’t 
forget. The weed is too big for us to 
pull up.” 

Toggles was silent a while, then he 
said: 

“I was kind of teasing Mabel, before 
she went into the house this morning.” 

“Were you?” asked Grandpa, anx- 
iously. 

“Yes. It was about a very, very 


THE WEED THAT GOT STARTED 177 

little thing and she was very foolish to 
let it bother her.” 

“That is the way it used to be with 
your Great-Uncle James and me,” said 
Grandpa. “Do you think you have 
done it so many times that now you 
won’t be able to forget how?” 

“Why, no, Grandpa. I didn’t ever 
tease her that way before.” 

Grandpa looked relieved. 

“Then I believe I’d never do it 
again, ’ ’ he said. “You think about it. ’ ’ 

And he went down to the horse-barn, 
leaving Toggles alone in the hammock. 

It was almost bed-time when Tog- 
gles, who had been in mother’s room, 
came to say good-night to Grandpa and 
Grandma. 


178 


TOGGLES 


“ Grandpa,” lie said, “you remember 
that weed that got started — the one I 
couldn’t pull this morning?” 

“Yes,” answered Grandpa. 

“Well, this afternoon I got the grub- 
ax and dug it out — every bit of it and 
I’ve made things all right with Mabel 
and this afternoon I cut paper-dolls 
with her a whole hour and I just hate 
cutting paper-dolls. Don’t you think, 
Grandpa, that if I try to please Mabel 
instead of tease her, that will get 
started, too, and instead of being a weed, 
it will be something nice, like a rasp- 
berry-bush, or a carrot, or something? 
And after a while it will be easy and I 
will like to do it? Mother thinks so.” 

“I believe Mother is right,” ex- 
claimed Grandpa. “I think it is a good 


THE WEED THAT GOT STARTED 179 


deal like our two boys who did things 
over.” 

Toggles thought a moment until he 
remembered. 

“Yes,” he agreed. “I believe it 
is, too. Good-night, Grandpa. Good- 
night, Grandma.” 

And he pattered off to bed. 


CHAPTER XVIII 


THE RESCUE OF ZENOBIA 

Z ENOBIA, as you may remember, 
was the cat. 

She was not a large cat but her tail 
was sharply pointed, which is a sign of 
good breeding, and, except for a little 
white necktie, her fur was all glossy 
black. She was a good mouser and very 
playful and intelligent. Why, that 
cat could even open the screen-door all 
by herself ! For all these reasons, and 
plenty of others just as good, Toggles 
and Mabel thought a great deal of 
Zenobia, and so, naturally, when for a 
whole day she never came to the house 


180 


TEE RESCUE OF ZEN OBI A 181 


to get lier milk or sleep in her basket, 
they were worried. 

“ Grandma hasn’t seen her since yes- 
terday morning,” Toggles explained to 
his Grandpa, “and Mother hasn’t seen 
her, nor Mabel, and I’m just afraid that 
some bad dog has chased her and — 
and — 

To go on would really have been too 
harrowing. 

“No,” replied Grandpa, reassur- 
ingly. “I doubt that. She can climb 
trees, you know, and no dog can do that ; 
and besides, Zenobia, when she is 
roused, is a terrible fighter. Why, I’ve 
seen her chase a dog twice as big as she 
is right out that gate.” 

There was consolation in that and 
Toggles knew Grandpa was right, too. 


182 


TOGGLES 


He himself had seen Zenobia chase one 
dog and that dog used every leg he had, 
and even then could not get out of the 
yard as fast as he wanted to. 

“But where is she ?” Toggles insisted. 

“Well,” returned Grandpa, “she 
may be lost and I believe we ought to 
send out a searching-party. ” 

“Where shall I look?” Toggles 
promptly volunteered. 

“Well, I’ll tell you what I would do. 
First, I would look everywhere in the 
house.” 

“I’ve done that,” declared Toggles. 

“Then I would look in the honey- 
house, and the corn-crib, and in the cow- 
barn, and in the horse-barn, and in the 
chicken-house, and in the carriage- 
house, and in the tool-house, and in the 


THE RESCUE OF ZEN OBI A 183 


granary — she may be catching mice. 
If she isn’t in any of those places, then 
I would go down to the pasture. 
Sometimes, you know, she goes down 
there to hunt for grasshoppers and go- 
phers; and she may have gone on an 
all-day’s hunt.” 

“And if she isn’t there?” 

“Then we can put an advertisement 
in the paper and offer a reward to any 
one who finds her.” 

Toggles seized his hat and started for 
the honey-house as fast as he could run. 
Inside were the new honey-boxes, and 
the empty hives, and the piles of 
“supers,” and he looked behind them 
all and called softly, “Kitty, Kitty, 
Kitty,” but no answering sound came 
back. Then he went to the corn-crib 


184 


TOGGLES 


and Jooked inside, and outside, and un- 
der it but there was no Zenobia. The 
big cow-barn seemed the most likely 
place, and he looked all over it, from 
the basement to the hay-mow and called 
and called but no kitty came. He went 
to the chicken-house, but a glance 
showed him that she was not there. 
The granary was as likely a place for 
mice as there was on the whole farm 
and he had strong hopes that Zenobia 
might be there, but he was disappointed. 
He had very little idea that she would 
be in the carriage-house or the tool- 
house, but he looked carefully in both 
places, calling all the while, and he was 
just leaving for the pasture when he 
happened to think of the horse-barn. 

It was a happy thought. 


THE RESCUE OF ZENOBIA 185 


In another moment Grandpa heard 
him shout: 

“I’ve found her! I’ve found her! 
But I can ’t get her out. Y ou see, ’ ’ — by 
this time he was at Grandpa’s side — 
“ she’s in that chute where you poke 
down the hay and she’s calling and call- 
ing but she can’t climb out, ’cause the 
boards on the sides are so slippery her 
claws won’t stick in and we can’t get 
her out at the bottom because there are 
just slats there and the spaces are too 
small for her.” 

Grandpa listened. He too could hear 
the “Meow! Meow!” from the hay- 
chute, and they both started to the lad- 
der leading to the loft, Grandpa stop- 
ping to pick up a basket which he fas- 
tened to the end of a long rope. 


186 


TOGGLES 


“We will let this down,” he said, 
“and then she can get in.” 

But Zenobia, for all she was such a 
smart cat, did not seem to understand. 
She knew some one was up there, trying 
to help her, for she had stopped cry- 
ing, but she was afraid to get into the 
basket and, when they pulled it up, it 
was empty. 

“That won’t work,” said Toggles, 
“I’ll have to go down myself.” 

“How can you do that?” asked 
Grandpa. 

“Why, you just let me down with the 
rope and when I say, ‘ Ready,’ you pull 
me up again.” 

“But she hasn’t eaten for a whole 
day,” said Grandpa, “she may scratch 
you.” 


THE RESCUE OF ZENOBIA 187 

“Oh, no. She knows me too well. 
I’m not afraid of that. I’ll take good 
hold and you just let me down.” 

Toggles grasped the big rope with his 
strong, little hands and Grandpa low- 
ered him slowly, down, down, down into 
the hay-ehute. 

“Are you there?” called Grandpa. 

“All ready!” answered Toggles. 

And when Grandpa pulled him up, 
there was Zenobia, on his shoulder, 
rubbing against his face and purring 
her very loudest. 


CHAPTER XIX 


TOGGLES USES HIS FORGETTER 

E verything seemed to start 

right that morning. 

For one thing the sunshine! When 
Toggles woke up, it was not too bright, 
nor too hot but the sun shone as if he 
enjoyed it and wanted to shine the very 
best he could. Mother came down to 
breakfast, which was enough to make a 
cheerful beginning for any day, and 
after breakfast she lay in the hammock 
and for more than an hour read stories 
to Toggles and Mabel — something she 
had not done for a long time. 

After that Toggles went rolling his 
188 


TOGGLES USES HIS FORGETTER 189 

hoop down the road and then — as you 
know sometimes happens — there came 
something that seemed to take all the 
joy out of the sunshine and almost 
spoiled the day. Toggles walked back 
into the yard quite dejected and, hear- 
ing a hammering in the tool-house, went 
to tell Grandpa about it. 

“You see,” he exclaimed, “I was just 
by the sign-post and Frank he came 
fast around the corner — ” 

“Frank?” queried Grandpa. 

“Yes. He’s older than Johnny and 
me. I don’t know him very well but 
he lives in that little house by Mr. Sa- 
low’s silo.” 

“By Mr. Salow’s silo?” repeated 
Grandpa. 

Toggles almost smiled. Those words 


190 


TOGGLES 


did sound funny together. But he re- 
membered in time that this was no smil- 
ing matter and went on : 

“Yes, awfully fast, round the corner 
and his wheel went straight into my new 
hoop and broke it and it hit my leg and 
took the skin off. It bled, too.” 

“And he never looked around?” 

“Yes, he looked around,” said Tog- 
gles, for he was trying to tell it exactly 
as it was, “but, when he saw that I was 
standing up yet, he went right on as 
fast as ever. I almost think it would 
not have hurt so bad, if he had stopped 
a minute and said that he was sorry.” 

“And I always thought that Prank 
was a nice boy, too,” said Grandpa. 

“Why, he always was nice to me till 
this time,” answered Toggles. “I 


TOGGLES USES HIS FORGETTER 191 

don’t see what made him do it. J ohnny 
says may be he’s stuck up because he’s 
got a bicycle and we haven’t; hut he 
never acted stuck up and once he gave 
me a ride. Do you think the next time 
I see him I ought to tell him that it 
wasn’t nice for him to run into me like 
that?” 

Grandpa did not answer but instead 
asked another question. 

“How much was the hoop worth?” 
be inquired. 

“Oh, I don’t know; I don’t suppose 
it was really worth anything — not in 
money ; and, besides, I can fix it easily. 
It’s just a barrel-hoop, you know. 
Only, he didn’t seem to care that he 
broke it.” 


“But you’re sure you can fix it?” 


192 


TOGGLES 


“Oh, yes, I can fix it all right.” 

“And the place where the wheel took 
the skin off?” Grandpa looked down at 
the little bare, brown leg. “How long 
will it take to get well ? It hurts pretty 
badly now, doesn’t it?” 

“Oh, no, Grandpa. It doesn’t hurt 
now ” this time Toggles did smile, he 
couldn’t help it. “Why, it’ll be all well 
in just a little while, so you can’t even 
find the place. But it hurt then and 
he knew that he had run into me and he 
didn’t even stop to see if I was hurt.” 

“But before that he was a good friend 
of yours?” 

“Yes, I liked him almost as well as I 
did Johnny.” 

Grandpa thought for a while. 


TOGGLES USES E1S FORGETTER 193 

“You know that hatchet that was left 
out on the grass one night,” he said, 
“and got all rusty?” 

Toggles looked up quickly, for it was 
not often that Grandpa reminded him 
of a thing like that. 

“Yes, Grandpa,” he said, “I forgot 
it, you know. But I ’m not going to for- 
get any more. After this I’m going to 
remember everything.” 

“Well, I wouldn’t do that,” con- 
tinued Grandpa, “because there are so 
many things that ought to be forgotten. 
You see, a boy has a Rememberer and a 
F orgetter and he should use them both 
only not for the same things. It is 
something like a hatchet and a hoe. 
Now, nobody would dig weeds with a 


194 


TOGGLES 


hatchet — a hatchet is not made for 
that; and nobody would cut kindling 
with a hoe — a hoe is not made for that. 
And it is a good deal the same way with 
a Rememberer and a Forgetter.” 

Toggles looked earnestly at Grandpa, 
but he was not sure that he fully under- 
stood. 

“Now, about that hatchet,” Grandpa 
went on, “you meant, of course, to use 
your Rememberer but instead you made 
a mistake and used your Forgetter and 
so the hatchet stayed out in the grass 
and got all wet and rusty. But this 
time I think your Forgetter is the thing 
to use.” 

Toggles wrinkled up his forehead and 
thought hard. 

“You see,” Grandpa explained, “if 


TOGGLES USES HIS FORGETTER 195 

you could once forget this, you and 
Frank would probably be just as good 
friends as ever ; and the hoop will soon 
be mended, so that won’t remind you; 
and the skinned place on your leg will 
soon be well, so that won’t remind you; 
and keeping friends with everybody is 
very important, almost the most impor- 
tant thing that there is. So I’m sure 
that this time I’d try to use my For- 
getter.” 

“ And may be he wasn’t mean on pur- 
pose, anyway,” said Toggles. 

“ Quite likely not,” said Grand- 
pa. 

So Toggles went down to the garden 
to do a little work, and after that he 
went out to the orchard and over to the 
woods and then, just before dinner 


196 


TOGGLES 


time, Grandpa saw him coming down 
the road as fast as he could run. 

‘ 1 It was all right — Grandpa — ” he 
shouted, as soon as he came near the 
porch. “I was using my Forgetter — 
just as hard as I could — ” Toggles had 
been running fast. “ — and I had it al- 
most forgot — when Frank came — and 
he told me their hired man had his hand 
cut very badly and Frank was going for 
the doctor — so he couldn’t stop — but he 
was sorry, anyway — he came clear over 
to tell me. So now I’m going to use my 
Forgetter on those bad words Johnny 
said the other day. He says he’s sorry 
he said ’em and he won’t say ’em any 
more, and I think I would like him bet- 
ter if I could forget he ever said ’em.” 


CHAPTEE XX 


THE THINGS GOD HID 

T OGGLES, nor Mabel, nor even 
Mother, not one of them could tell 
what had become of the summer, but it 
was beginning to draw to a close now. 
One of these days they would have to 
be going home. When they went home, 
Toggles would have to go back into 
school and school meant reading, writ- 
ing, language work, and, worst of all, 
“tables.” Tables are not easy when a 
boy has had not one thought about them 
for almost eleven weeks, and so when 
mother began to review them with him, 
(she was enough better so she could do 

197 


198 


TOGGLES 


that now) he worked hard and did not 
succeed very well. 

One night, when he was tired and a 
little discouraged, Grandpa came into 
the room, just after the prayers were 
said, and Toggles asked : 

“Mama, couldn’t Grandpa tell me a 
story?” 

“That’s just as Grandpa thinks 
best,” said mother. 

‘ ‘ Why, I ’m no story-teller ! ’ ’ Grandpa 
exclaimed. 

“Well,” insisted Toggles, “couldn’t 
we i philosophize’ then?” 

“We might do that,” Grandpa 
agreed. “What shall we i philoso- 
phize’ about?” 

“I don’t know,” returned Toggles. 

“Well,” mused Grandpa, “I was 


THE THINGS GOD HID 


199 


reading to-day about a railroad in Can- 
ada. Do you think that would be in- 
teresting ?” 

“I suppose so.” Toggles curled up 
to listen. “ Everything you tell me is 
’most always interesting.” 

“Well, Canada, you know, is very 
cold in winter. The snow grows 
deeper and deeper and it lies on the 
ground a long time. So, the first win- 
ter after this railroad was built, the 
men who built it began to think how 
few towns there were then, and what if 
there should come snow-storms and 
trains be stuck — might not the people 
starve? They talked it all over, and 
finally one man said, ‘We must hide 
food along the way and give every con- 
ductor a book that tells the place where 


200 


TOGGLES 


it is hidden; then, if his train gets 
stuck, the conductor can look up in his 
book the nearest hiding-place; and he 
and some of the men on the train can 
go and get the food and that will give 
the people something to eat while they 
are digging out.’ 

“So they hid food at different places 
clear to the end of the line. If a train 
got stuck when it was half-way, food 
was there; if it got stuck a hundred 
miles farther on, it was there, too ; and 
so on, clear to the end.” 

“Is there an end to the railroad?” 
Toggles interrupted. 

“Oh, yes, the railroad has to end 
somewhere. And now,” asked Grand- 
pa, “would you like to philosophize 
about that?” 


THE THINGS GOD HID 


201 


“Yes,” answered Toggles promptly. 
Talking with Grandpa had almost made 
him forget how tired he was. 

“Well,” Grandpa went on, “I’m not 
just sure that I can make it plain. But 
if you do understand it you will see that 
it is a wonderful thing ; and it is this — 
that God has done for everybody just 
what those railroad people did for the 
trains in the snow.” 

He waited a minute to be sure Tog- 
gles knew what it was that he was going 
to try to explain, and then he went on : 

“Mabel can’t read much now, can 
she?” 

“No; just a little,” returned Toggles. 

“But you are quite sure that when she 
gets to be six and goes to school she will 
be smart enough to learn?” 


202 


TOGGLES 


“Why, yes, Grandpa, of course.” 

“What makes you think so?” 

“Why,” exclaimed Toggles, “Mabel 
has sense. She can do lots of things 
now. She can spell her own name, and 
she knows how much two and two 
are — ” 

“And so you think, when there comes 
harder things, she will find the sense to 
learn them, too. Is that it?” 

Toggles nodded. 

“Now, can you tell me how much 
fourteen times nineteen is?” 

“The tables don’t go that far. Only 
to twelve times twelve.” 

“Do you think you could work it 
out?” Grandpa insisted. “I could.” 

“No,” returned Toggles, after a mo- 
ment’s thought. “I couldn’t;” 


THE THINGS GOD HID 


203 


“Well, I think somewhere in your 
mind there is sense enough to do that, 
only God has hidden it ; not to keep it 
away from you but just so it will be 
near the place where you need it. Next 
year I think you will be able to do that 
easily and later find still more sense 
hidden away up here,” Grandpa 
tapped his finger lightly on Toggles’s 
rumpled head, “sense for long division, 
and fractions, and algebra, and then 
geometry, and trigonometry, ’ ’ — they 
were quite terrible words, — “only you 
may never work hard enough to find all 
God has put there. 

“It isn’t just easy to understand,” 
Grandpa went on, for by the way that 
Toggles puckered his smooth little fore- 
head, Grandpa could see that he was 


204 


TOGGLES 


puzzled, “but it’s something like this: 
the things that God wants us to find 
when we are little, he hides almost in 
plain sight, the way I suppose you hide 
Easter Eggs for Mabel on Easter morn- 
ing — all babies, unless there is some- 
thing wrong with them, learn walking 
and talking. But, as we grow older, he 
leaves it more to us ; we can find brains 
to do harder and harder things, if we 
try, but if we are lazy and don’t try, 
God doesn ’t make us. It is just like the 
people on the train, they knew where 
the food was but nobody made them get 
it” 

“But how,” demanded Toggles, “how 
do you find what God has hidden in your 
head?” 

“Well, I can give you a sort of illus- 


THE THINGS GOD HID 205 

tration. When I was little I used to 
be a good runner, and sometimes when 
some other boy was chasing me I would 
run until it seemed to me I simply could 
not run any more — ” 

“And your side ached ?” 

“And my side ached like everything 
and then, if I kept on, it grew easier. 
God had more muscle saved up there 
for me to run with, but I couldn’t get it 
until I came where I needed it.” 

“Is it God makes a boy run fast?” 
asked Toggles. 

“I do not think any boy could run at 
all, or think at all, if it were not for 
God.” 

“What do you do to find the sense 
that God gave you to learn tables?” 
Toggles ’s eyes were very bright. 


206 


TOGGLES 


“Work your hardest and keep on 
working, just the same as if you were 
running. Hard Work and Persever- 
ance — you know what Perseverance 
means ?” 

“ ‘If at first you don’t succeed, 

Try, try—’ ” 

“That’s it. Now those two things 
everybody needs to help him find what 
God has hidden for him, and nobody 
knows, nobody knows how many such 
things there are or how wonderful they 
are ; we only know there are many, many 
of them, and that if we work hard we 
keep finding more and more. So, when 
there comes a real hard lesson, any boy 
or man ought to say, ‘I know God has 
given me the sense to learn this and, just 
as soon as I can, I am going to find it.’ ” 


THE THINGS GOD HID 


207 


“ Grandpa/ ’ exclaimed Toggles, “I 
believe I could say my tables right now. 
I believe I could say all of them straight 
through in five minutes — Now, 
listen — ” 

“Dear me!” cried Grandpa. “And 
here I was going to get you all ready to 
go to sleep. That’s something to find, 
too, the sense to k go to sleep with, quick, 
when it’s sleepy-time. How do you do 
that?” 

“Lie still, shut your eyes, and take 
long breaths, ’ ’ answered Toggles. That 
was Grandpa’s own rule. 

“All right. I think you better try 
that now. I’ll hear the tables to-mor- 
row. Good-night.” 

“Good-night.” And in ten minutes 
Toggles was sound asleep. 


CHAPTER XXI 


mabel’s trouble 

I T happened on the first ride that they 
took alone with Grandpa in the new 
automobile. They drove to town and, 
because they were in a little hurry, they 
went straight to the bank and there it 
was agreed that Toggles should go to 
the post-office, get the mail and wait for 
Mabel and Grandpa. Grandpa would 
stay and finish his business with the man 
in the bank, and Mabel, all alone by her- 
self, might walk down to the candy- 
store on the corner and buy some candy. 
When they were all together again, they 
208 


MABEL’S TROUBLE 


209 


would pick out the little present for 
Mother; a surprise it was to be and a 
sort of reward, Grandpa said, for her 
getting well so fast. 

Grandpa had just finished his busi- 
ness and was wondering why it took 
Mabel so long to pick out her candy 
when the heavy bank door swung open 
and one look told the whole story. 
There stood Mabel, the tears rolling 
from her brown eyes clear down to the 
deep dimple in her chin and in her wee 
hand was her wee pocket-book — quite 
empty. 

“It’s too bad,” exclaimed Grandpa; 
‘where did you lose it?” 

“Oh, I don’t know,” sobbed Mabel. 
“I went straight to ve candy-store, ve 
way you told me and I held it — I’m 


210 


TOGGLES 


’most sure I held it — tight in my hand 
all ve time and ven, just as I was going 
in ve door, I looked and ve money wasn’t 
vere — it was all lost out.” 

“Where do you suppose you could 
have dropped it?” 

“I don’t know,” and the sobs came 
again. “I looked all ve way back — 
everywhere I looked, and it wasn’t 
vere.” 

“ We ’ll look together,” said Grandpa. 

Hand in hand they walked from the 
bank to the candy-store and back, look- 
ing carefully every step of the way, but 
not one single piece of money was to be 
found. 

“Some one must have picked it up,” 
was Grandpa’s explanation. 

44 So many are going back and forth 


MABEL’S TROUBLE 211 

and of course they would not know you 
had lost it.” 

At the post-office they found Toggles 
waiting. 

“ What’s the matter?” he demanded. 
“Did a dog chase her?” 

“No,” answered Mabel, and Grandpa 
told him the whole story. 

“How much did she have?” 

He had already thrust one small hand 
into his trousers’ pocket. 

“Two dimes and a nickel.” Mabel 
was almost ready to cry again. 

4 4 Hm ! ’ 9 mused Toggles. 4 6 Five cents 
is all I have. But you can have that,” 
he added. And he handed it to her. 

“That will be enough to buy the 
candy,” suggested Grandpa. “Five- 


212 


TOGGLES 


cents ’-worth, it seems to me, is all two 
small children ought to eat at one time ; 
and I’ll furnish ten cents for the present 
for Mother. That need not be ex- 
pensive; the part that will please her 
most is to know that her little folks 
thought about her.” 

That was the way they arranged it, 
and it wasn’t of course the same and 
Mabel could not quite forget, but in the 
auto on the way home Grandpa told 
funny stories, and Toggles talked about 
other things, and the candy had a sooth- 
ing effect, and so, when at last they 
drove into the yard, Mabel was quite a 
happy little girl again. 

Near supper-time Grandpa and Tog- 
gles had their talk about it. They were 


MABEL’S TROUBLE 


213 


sitting in the hammock, watching the 
clouds gather, for it looked as if it were 
going to rain. 

“Wasn’t it too bad about Mabel’s los- 
ing her money?” said Toggles. 

“Indeed it was,” answered Grandma, 
“I felt very sorry for her.” 

“And wouldn’t it have been nice,” 
Toggles went on, “if some rich man had 
come along just then and said, ‘Never 
mind, little girl, don’t cry any more. 
Here are two dimes and a nickel.’ ” 

“It would not have needed any rich 
man to say that,” said Grandpa. “I 
had two dimes and a nickel right in my 
pocket.” 

“You did, Grandpa!” cried Toggles. 
“Why—?” 

Then he stopped, for it did not seem 


214 


TOGGLES 


to him that the question on the tip of 
his tongue would be polite. 

“Why didn’t I give them to Mabel ?” 
Toggles did not answer and Grandpa 
went on, “Well, I wanted to very 
much. More, I think, than I have 
wanted to do anything else this sum- 
mer but it just did not seem to me the 
right thing to do.” 

“Will it be unpolite if I tell you what 
I think about it,” said Toggles. 

“No. I should like to hear what you 
think about it.” 

“Well, it seems to me that to stop 
Mabel’s crying and make her all happy 
again would have been a very good thing 
and, if I had had two dimes and a nickel, 
I would have given them to her right 
then.” 


MABEL’S TROUBLE 


215 


“Your papa lost some money not a 
great while ago,” said Grandpa. 

“I know,” answered Toggles. 

“Should I have given him back what 
he lost?” 

Toggles thought for a while. 

“I think it would have been too 
much,” he said at length. 

“I could have done it.” 

“But Papa can earn more money for 
himself; and it wasn’t your fault that 
he lost it. It was the lightning that set 
the garage on fire.” 

“Mabel gets a cent a day for helping 
Grandma put the dishes away; and it 
wasn’t my fault that she lost her money. 
I told her to be very careful and, if she 
had been, she would not have dropped 
it.” 


216 


TOGGLES 


6 6 Y-yes, ’ 9 agreed Toggles. 6 1 Only — * 9 
“Only it does seem hard for a little 
girl to have such a trouble: that’s the 
part to explain. Well, you see, all of 
us have troubles ; little people, and their 
fathers, and their mothers, and their 
grandfathers, and their grandmothers — 
even kings and queens — some of them 
have the very worst kinds of trouble; 
and we learn to be brave about our 
troubles by being brave first about little 
ones, and then, when the bigger ones 
come, they don’t seem so dreadful. 
Now, a boy or girl who had never had 
to be brave about a little trouble — 
what could he possibly do with a big 
one? He might not even try to be 
brave at all. And so,” Grandpa ended, 
“hard as this was for me, and for you, 


MABEL’S TROUBLE 


217 


and for Mabel, I really thought it would 
be better if she stood most of her trouble 
herself.” 

Toggles sat thinking. Finally an odd 
twist came into the corner of his mouth. 

“Grandpa,” he said, “was that why, 
when I broke my cart, you had me help 
fix it when really, I suppose, you could 
have done it much quicker all by your- 
self?” 

“That was it,” answered Grandpa. 

They smiled at each other as two peo- 
ple are apt to do, when they have a sort 
of secret. It was just then that the rain 
came and they had to run for the house. 


CHAPTER XXII 


TOGGLES BORROWS A BIRTHDAY 

T OGGLES ’S birthday (his own 
birthday, not the one he bor- 
rowed) did not come until the week 
before they left for home and there is 
really no need to tell much about it, it 
was so much like Mabel’s. There was 
another group of children at the “ fresh- 
air” camp now, mostly girls again, but 
that did not matter, they seemed to have 
just as good a time as boys would have 
had and so Toggles, and Mabel, and 
J ohnny had just as good a time. Only 
Martha was not there, for she and her 


218 


TOGGLES BORROWS A BIRTHDAY 219 

father and mother had already broken 
camp and gone home. 

When the guests had all said “ Good- 
by,’ * and the three hay-racks, swarming 
with cheering children, had turned the 
corner, Toggles came back into the 
house and dropped into the first chair. 
The sitting-room was all in confusion, 
for they had been playing blind man’s 
buff. In the dining-room, where they 
had eaten their lunch, the dishes still 
stood on the table, and the eight candles, 
all ranged around the plate that had 
held the birthday cake. In the bedroom 
were the presents from Mother, and 
Mabel, and Grandpa, and Grandma, and 
a wonderful ship, all whittled out by 
Chris; and, as Toggles thought of all 


220 


TOGGLES 


that long and happy day, there came 
into his throat a strange feeling. 

“Grandpa,” he said, “were you ever 
so happy that you couldn’t talk about 
it?” 

“Yes,” answered Grandpa. 

“Then you know,” said Toggles. 
“Why, Grandpa, if God should say to 
me right now, ‘Toggles, what could I do 
to make you gladder yet?’ all I could 
say would be, ‘Let me have it again, an- 
other day.’ But a boy never has but 
one eight-year-old birthday, does 
he?” 

“Not usually.” 

“Not usually! Why, he doesn’t. 
Does he, Grandpa ? How could he ? ” 

“He might borrow one,” suggested 
Grandpa. 


TOGGLES BORROWS A BIRTHDAY 221 

Toggles laughed. 

“How could he do that, Grandpa I” 

“Well, I know a boy who one time 
had a whole lot of fireworks, hut when 
Fourth of July came he was sitek and 
so he gave them to some other boys to 
shoot off. They sort of borrowed his 
Fourth of July.” 

Toggles smiled, for he remembered 
that, too. 

“And if a boy had a birthday he could 
not use, or did not know how to use, it 
seems to me that he might give it to an- 
other boy to celebrate.” 

“I believe,” said Toggles, “that it 
would be almost as much fun as your 
really own birthday.” 

“I think so, too,” said Grandpa, 
“and, if you want me to, when I go to 


222 


TOGGLES 


town to-morrow, I’ll look around and 
see if I can find anybody who will loan 
you a birthday.” 

So, next afternoon, when Grandpa 
came back from town, the first question 
that Toggles asked him was : 

“Did you find a boy who could loan 
me his birthday?” 

“No,” answered Grandpa, “but I 
found a girl.” 

Somehow a girl’s birthday had not 
been just what Toggles had expected. 

“She wasn’t a little girl,” Grandpa 
went on; “she’s eighteen, but you 
wouldn’t really call her grown-up. She 
hasn’t learned to talk yet.” 

“She hasn’t — •!” But it seemed 
hopeless to try to understand about a 
girl eighteen years old who had not 


TOGGLES BORROWS A BIRTHDAY 223 

learned to talk, so Toggles dropped that 
question and asked another. 

“When does the birthday come?” he 
demanded. 

‘ ‘ To-morrow. W e ’ll have to hurry to 
get ready. I suppose we ought to have 
a cake?” 

“Surely.” 

“Well, I bought the eighteen can- 
dles.” 

“That custard with the white on the 
top is very good,” suggested Toggles. 

“We will ask Grandma about that,” 
said Grandpa; and they went inside, 
planning other things that would make 
the borrowed birthday better. 

Early next afternoon they started for 
town, Grandpa, and Grandma, and 
Mabel, and Toggles, and Mother — she 


224 


TOGGLES 


was well enough now — all of them in 
the new automobile. There was no one 
left at home excepting Chris and Watch. 
Just where they were to go was a secret, 
so Toggles asked no questions; but he 
was surprised enough when they 
stopped at the big schoolhouse. 

There were only four children in the 
room they entered, and all, Grandpa 
told him, were deaf, not one of them 
could hear as he could. At first he 
watched them at their regular school 
work and wondered to find them learn- 
ing to say words, some of them quite 
plainly. He wondered, too, at the way 
they understood, for they did not hear 
with their ears but with their eyes, by 
the motion of their teacher’s lips, and 
Toggles, when he tried hard, could once 


TOGGLES BORROWS A BIRTHDAY 225 

in a while understand a word that way 
himself. The deaf children could un- 
derstand nearly everything he said and 
could answer him pretty well, except the 
eighteen-year-old girl ; she, as Grandpa 
had told him, had not quite learned to 
talk yet, though she was learning. Tog- 
gles saw, too, the things they had made, 
the pictures, and baskets, and note- 
books. 

Afterward, when school was over, 
they lighted the candles and the girl who 
had loaned Toggles her birthday cut the 
cake and passed it first to them and then 
to the others. After the cake, they had 
nuts and candy and the custard with the 
white on top, and everything was passed 
by the girl who had loaned Toggles her 
birthday. 


226 


TOGGLES 


When they had finished eating, they 
played drop-the-handkerchief and, be- 
fore they had begun to think that it was 
time, the father of one of the little deaf 
girls had come to take her home. 

“ Grandpa, ” said Toggles, on the way 
back, “ that’s a good school. Why, the 
teacher told me that that birthday girl 
was just wild at first, and when they 
w T ent to see if she would come to school, 
she went and hid under the bed. But 
now she seems to be quite a nice girl. 
It was very kind of her to loan me her 
birthday. I had a very good time. 
Didn’t you?” 

“Yes,” answered Grandpa, “and I 
think she did, too.” 

But that was not all that Toggles 
thought about the borrowed birthday, 


TOGGLES BORROWS A BIRTHDAY 227 

for that night after he had been tucked 
into bed, he said : 

“ Mother, I have had two very useful 
things for eight years, and this after- 
noon it came to me that I had never 
once said ‘ Thank you ’ for them to God. ’ * 

“What are they?” asked Mother. 

“Why, they’re my ears — ears, you 
know, that can hear. But I thanked 
Him to-night all right,” he added. 

“Well,” answered Mother, “I have 
had my ears longer than you have had 
yours and, until this afternoon, I think 
I never realized how grateful I ought to 
be that both my little folks and I have 
them. I said ‘ Thank you,’ too, right 
there in the school-room.” 

Then she kissed Toggles and went 
down-stairs. 


CHAPTER XXIII 


THE MAH WITH THE GREEN TIN BOX 
OU remember, of course, about 



JL the farm’s being a city of refuge 
for the birds and about Toggles and 
Johnny being marshals to enforce the 
laws. There are all sorts of things I 
might tell you about them — marshals 
are apt to have stirring adventures — 
but there simply is not room to put them 
all in. It would not do, though, to leave 
out the very last one. 

Toggles was just coming from 
Johnny’s house, he had his star on and, 
as he came to the fence, he stopped to 
read one of the signs : 


228 


THE MAN WITH TEE TIN BOX 229 


TRESPASS ALL YOU WANT TO 
BUT DON’T HARM THE BIRDS. 

It reminded him of what a glorious 
summer he and the birds had had to- 
gether and of how many friends he had 
made among them. One that he liked 
almost the best of all was the beautiful 
bird that Grandpa called a Golden 
Robin and Mother called a Baltimore 
Oriole and whose wonderful nest swung 
like a tiny hammock from the branch 
of the big walnut-tree on the edge of 
the orchard. 

He was just thinking of him when he 
came into the woods and saw, just a lit- 
tle way ahead, the man with the green tin 
box. The man had not seen Toggles, 
for he had his back turned. Toggles 
thought he might be a soldier or a sailor, 


230 


TOGGLES 


he walked so straight; but perhaps he 
thought that only on account of the cap 
and the field-glass. The man was going 
toward the orchard; and Toggles fol- 
lowed him, keeping out of sight but 
watching closely for, being a marshal of 
the City of Refuge, it was his business 
to know what a stranger was doing on 
his grandpa’s farm. 

The man was walking slowly. Once 
he stopped to pull some leaves and put 
them into the green tin box and several 
times he whistled — so like a bird that, 
when the real birds answered, Toggles 
could hardly tell the difference. Then 
he came out by the big walnut, laid the 
green tin box and the field-glass down 
on the ground, and, throwing off his 
coat, began climbing the tree. 


THE MAN WITH THE TIN BOX 231 

Toggles had never seen a grown man 
climb a tree before and he watched 
eagerly, very much surprised and inter- 
ested until he saw him swing to the limb 
from which he could reach the oriole’s 
nest and take out his knife and then 
suddenly Toggles wished that he were 
big enough to take hold of the tree and 
shake it until the man should come tum- 
bling down like a ripe apple. 

He was so very angry that he never 
stopped to think of anything but the out- 
rage to the oriole and, when the man 
reached the ground, with the nest in his 
hand, he walked straight up to him, his 
eyes blazing and his words fairly tum- 
bling over one another in their eager- 
ness to get out and tell his indignation. 

“ Don’t you know it’s wicked to steal 


232 


TOGGLES 


nests ?” he asked. “ That’s the birds’ 
house, that they live in, just the way we 
live in our houses. How’d you like it if 
you went home some night and found a 
big giant had carried off your house*?” 

The man was plainly surprised, but he 
laid down the nest and then sat down on 
the grass. 

* ‘ Whose boy are you ? ” he asked. 

The voice was kind and Toggles an- 
swered the man’s question, though he 
was very angry still. 

“My name is Toggles,” he said, “and 
I’m living here with my mother, right 
on Grandpa’s farm and my grandpa 
doesn’t like people to steal nests on his 
land. Didn’t you read the sign*?” 

“Yes,” answered the man, “and I 
thought it was a very good sign. Do 


THE MAN WITH TEE TIN BOX 233 


you help your grandpa take care of the 
birds ?” 

“Pm marshal,” said Toggles, show- 
ing his star; “that’s what I’ve got this 
star for, because I’m a marshal of this 
City of Eefuge for the birds. If you 
saw the sign, why didn’t you mind?” 

“Is it always wrong to take birds’ 
nests?” asked the man. 

He spoke so gently, and looked like 
such a nice, good man, that Toggles 
could hardly believe that he had done 
the wicked thing that he had seen, only — 
there lay the branch, cut off, with the 
nest hanging from it. 

“Yes, sir,” he answered promptly, 
“it always is — that is, of course,” he 
added, “unless they’re last-year’s 
nests.” 


234 


TOGGLES 


The man took the branch from the 
ground. 

“This,” he said, “is a last-year’s 
nest.” 

Toggles looked him squarely in the 
eye. 

“I don’t know what your name is,” 
he said, “but it is a very wicked thing 
to tell lies. I saw the oriole last Sun- 
day.” 

Something very like a smile crossed 
the man’s face, but when he answered 
he did so gravely enough. 

“And so did I,” he said, “and Mon- 
day. Have you seen him since then?” 

Toggles thought a moment. 

“No,” he replied. 

“And neither have I. He started 
south Tuesday night and he won’t be 





















































































- 

















































THE MAN WITH TEE TIN BOX 235 

back this year. He will never use this 
nest again. And I wouldn’t mind a big 
giant’s taking away my house, if I were 
all through with it, and had gone to live 
in another country — would you?” 

Toggles thought again. 

“No,” he answered. “Where’s he 
gone to?” 

“To Central America,” replied the 
man. “He goes there every winter. 
But he will come back in May and make 
a new nest. Now, the kingfisher down 
by the swamp — ” 

“Bo you know him, too?” broke in 
Toggles. 

“He comes in March, and so do the 
mourning-doves, but the robins — ” 

“They come first,” said Toggles. 

“Not this year. The blackbirds were 


236 


TOGGLES 


ahead of them this time. But, by the 
way, have you seen — t” 

And that was the beginning of a talk 
that lasted until they heard the dinner- 
bell ringing from the other side of the 
orchard. 

“Grandpa,” exclaimed Toggles, as he 
ran panting up the front steps, “I’ve 
been talking with a man who knows 
about birds — oh, more than anybody; 
and to-morrow he’s going to take me 
over to Mr. Smith’s farm to show me 
where some owls live and I want to know 
who he is. I forgot to ask him, we 
got so interested talking about the 
birds.” 

“Did he Carry a green tin box?” 
asked Grandpa. “And wear a cap with 
a little leather forepiece?” 


THE MAN WITH THE TIN BOX 237 


“Yes,” exclaimed Toggles, “that’s 
the man.” 

‘ 4 W ell, ’ ’ said Grandpa, “I’m glad you 
came to know him. He preaches down 
in the village and he is just as good a 
friend to boys as he is to birds. When 
you come from Mr. Smith’s farm to- 
morrow, you bring him here to supper.” 


CHAPTER XXIV 


THE SAYED-UP SUNSHINE 

T OGGLES had some excuse. 

When you come to think of it, 
every one who is ever cross, or glum, or 
impatient, has some excuse and always, 
to him it seems a good enough one to 
account for the way he acts. But, as 
excuses go, Toggles’s was really a fairly 
good one. 

They had planned to start right away 
after breakfast, all of them, in the new 
automobile. They were to drive clear 
to Lake Muscroon and have their lunch 
on the shore, and Grandpa had prom- 
ised to take them out in a rowboat, and 


238 


THE SAVED-UP SUNSHINE 239 


Toggles and Mabel were going wading, 
and it was their very last chance, for 
they were going home now in just three 
days more and one of those days was 
Sunday. You can see for yourself that 
it was no ordinary plan. And then it 
rained! 

The moment Toggles wakened he 
heard it and ran to the window. Every- 
thing looked wet, and dark, and discour- 
aged, and there was not the slightest 
hint of improvement. All through 
breakfast, he and Mabel kept hoping 
that it would stop and the sun come out, 
but it rained harder than ever. After 
breakfast they still hoped, for a while, 
but by nine o’clock they knew there was 
no use hoping any longer and then Tog- 
gles simply gave up so much as trying 


240 


TOGGLES 


to be cheerful. He could not cry, of 
course ; he was eight years old now and 
mueh too big for that, but he sat down 
in the front room and he didn’t want to 
play with Mabel (who was really behav- 
ing better than he was) and he didn’t 
want Mother to read to them, and he 
didn’t want to go out and see Grandma 
making cookies — that was the most 
amazing thing of all — he didn’t want to 
do anything but just sit there and be 
miserable. 

Now whether Grandpa knew how he 
felt, that I can’t tell, but all at once he 
came into the room, rubbing his hands 
and saying : 

“Well, this is a dark, gloomy, chilly 
day,” and then, in the same ordinary 
tone in which he so often said such ab- 


THE SAVED-UP SUNSHINE 241 

surd things, “I must go down cellar and 
bring up a basket of sunshine.” 

A basket of sunshine sounded so sur- 
prising that Toggles, for a moment, 
looked almost interested. But he re- 
membered the rain that was spoiling the 
picnic and his face clouded again. 

“I wish you would get some,” said 
Mother, ‘ ‘we need some here.” 

4 4 Well, I will,” returned Grandpa. 
“I’m real glad I had Mr. Walters bring 
us that load.” 

Toggles could not help hearing and he 
realized that either for once Grandpa 
was mistaken or else, more likely, this 
was some sort of conundrum and, if it 
was, he wanted to know the answer. 

“Grandpa,” he demanded, “how can 
there be sunshine down cellar?” 


242 


TOGGLES 


“I can’t quite explain,” said 
Grandpa, “and besides, I’m too busy 
right now, but I know it’s there. I saw 
it there not fifteen minutes ago.” 

“I’ll go down with you,” volunteered 
Toggles. 

But, when they were in the cellar and 
Grandpa picked up the shovel, Toggles 
suddenly burst out : 

“Why, Grandpa, that isn’t sunshine. 
That’s coal ” 

“How do you know?” retorted 
Grandpa. 

“Why, by the looks.” 

“You can’t tell by looks. I wouldn’t 
depend on that. I’ve known an apple 
to look beautiful and almost the whole 
inside was rotten and I’ve known — ” 

“But — ” Toggles protested. Grand- 


THE SAVED -UP SUNSHINE 243 

pa’s fashion of arguing was sometimes 
a little bewildering. “But — Well, 
Grandpa, how do you know it’s sun- 
shine?” 

“By the way it acts,” promptly re- 
turned Grandpa, and when Toggles 
looked puzzled he asked, “What does 
sunshine do?” 

Toggles thought for a moment: 

“It makes things light and warm.” 

“Well, that’s just what this does.” 

“But is it really sunshine?” Toggles 
insisted. 

“Is ice really water?” 

Toggles had to think again. 

“One way it is, and one way it isn’t.” 

“Well, it’s the same with this.” 

“I wish you would tell me about it.” 

“When we get up-stairs I will.” 


244 


TOGGLES 


And, after the fire was kindled in the 
big fire-place, and the tiny flames were 
leaping up between the black lumps and 
crackling and spluttering, Grandpa 
took Toggles on his knee and began : 

“ Before God made men, he made the 
sun and it used to shine then, just as it 
does now, but the sunshine was not all 
wasted, just because there were no men 
to see it ; for, in a way so wonderful that 
I can’t begin to explain it all to you or 
even to understand it myself, the sun- 
shine grew into the leaves and tree 
trunks of the great forests that grew 
in those days, and then the leaves and 
the tree trunks, with the sunshine all 
frozen up in them, you might say — God 
turned them into coal, buried deep in the 
ground. Afterward men came and they 


THE SAVED-UP SUNSHINE 245 

learned to dig down and get ont the coal 
— and, when they made a fire of it, there 
would come out the heat and the light — 
the sunshine — that God had saved up 
for them so long ago and it made them 
warm and cheerful.” 

“It’s very wonderful, isn’t it?” said 
Toggles seriously, looking down into the 
dancing flames. 

“Yes,” answered Grandpa, “but 
there is another thing that to me is al- 
most as wonderful.” 

“What is that?” 

“It is that we can do just what God 
did. We can save sunshine, too. I 
know a man who, for a longer time than 
you have lived, has been so sick he can’t 
get out of bed, but he is the j oiliest man 
to visit ! He has saved up the pleasant 


246 


TOGGLES 


things that happened before he was sick 
and, when a pain hurts him badly, he 
thinks about them. 

4 4 I’ve even known little boys, too, not 
more than eight years old, who when 
there came dark, cloudy, gloomy days 
never sulked — they just thought about 
their birthday parties, and their days 
in camp, and all the good times — ” 

Toggles could feel his cheeks getting 
hot and he reached up and put his fin- 
gers on Grandpa’s lips. 

4 4 Grandpa,” he interrupted, 44 you 
don’t need to tell any more about that. 
Because I’m not going to act this way 
again and I’m going right this minute 
to play with Mabel.” 

And he did. 


CHAPTER XXV 


THE PUBLIC BENEFACTORS 

I T was late Sunday afternoon and 
Toggles and his grandpa, sitting in 
the hammock, had been talking about all 
the happy times of the summer; first, 
the friends Toggles had made, Johnny, 
and Frank, and Martha, and her father 
and mother, and the “fresh-air” chil- 
dren, to say nothing of the animal 
friends, Zenobia, and the horses, and the 
cows, and the chickens, and the pigs, and 
Watch; it seemed positively funny now 
but, when Toggles first came to the farm 
he, and particularly Mabel, had been 
afraid of Watch. They talked, too, of 


247 


248 


TOGGLES 


all the things Toggles had learned, about 
the bees, and the birds, and the bugs, 
and the flowers, and the weeds, and the 
vegetables and, last of all, they came to 
talk of the most important thing, and 
that was Mother’s getting well. 

“Why,” exclaimed Toggles, “ she’s so 
well now it doesn’t seem as if she ever 
could get sick again or as if she ever 
really had been sick. Why, when we 
were playing tag, yesterday afternoon, 
she chased me clear around the corn- 
crib and she jumped over the lawn- 
mower — I thought I could run pretty 
fast but she caught me. I couldn’t run 
as fast as Mother. And she was sick 
such a long time!” 

“ Almost six months,” said Grandpa. 

“I don’t know in months,” Toggles 


THE PUBLIC BENEFACTORS 249 


answered, “but I know it was a long, 
long time. And now,” be added, tri- 
umphantly, “now she’s well, God made 
her well.” 

Grandpa did not say anything, but it 
is more than likely that he was thinking 
just what Toggles thought. 

“Did I ever tell you what the doctor 
told me one day?” asked Toggles. 

“No. I don’t remember that you 
ever told me.” 

“Well, every day, when he went home, 
I used to ask him, ‘ Have you made my 
mama well yet?’ and ’most always he 
would say, ‘Not yet.’ But one day, 
when she was so very, very sick — when 
Papa telegraphed to you — you remem- 
ber—?” 

Grandpa nodded : he remembered. 


250 


TOGGLES 


‘ ‘ Well, that day I asked him, just the 
same as always, ‘Have you made my 
mama well yeti’ and that time he didn’t 
say, ‘Not yet,’ but he sat down on the 
stairs and took me in his lap and said, 
‘No, Toggles, I’ve tried and I’ll keep on 
trying, but I can’t make your mama 
well. Nobody but God can do that.’ 
And now she’s well and the doctor 
helped his very best but, you see, I know 
it was God and not the doctor that really 
did it.” 

“And we can never thank Him 
enough,” said Grandpa. 

“Not if we were to say, ‘Thank you,’ 
till we were old men, could we, 
Grandpa?” 

“No.” 

Toggles looked far away across the 


THE PUBLIC BENEFACTORS 251 

fields to where the round, red sun was 
going down, no longer bright and daz- 
zling but with its light subdued and 
softened, as if it were a monstrous Chi- 
nese lantern, hung in the western sky. 

“ Grandpa,’ ’ he said, “ there was a 
lady in Sunday school one time who 
told us about a man who built a church, 
a whole big church, to show he was glad 
because his little girl got well when she 
was sick. I wish that we could do that, 
you and I, only it costs a great deal of 
money to build a church, doesn’t it, 
Grandpa?” 

“Yes,” answered Grandpa. “Per- 
haps though there is something else we 
can do.” 

“It ought to be something like a 
church, or a Sunday school, that would 


252 


TOGGLES 


help a lot of people, or like Mother’s 
picture of the little Lord Jesus and his 
mother, that just makes you feel good 
when you look at it.” (It was the Sis- 
tine Madonna that Toggles meant.) 

i ‘Well,” said Grandpa, “we must try 
to think of something.” 

So they tried but they did not think 
of it that day, and the right thing came 
to them at last almost of itself when 
Toggles was telling Grandpa next after- 
noon of the man he had seen riding 
down the big hill on the other side of 
the woods. 

“He was going so fast there at the 
bottom, Grandpa, that he couldn’t stop 
and so he ran right smack into the rail- 
ing of the bridge, and broke the front 
wheel of his bicycle, and cut his head so 


THE PUBLIC BENEFACTORS 253 

that the blood ran — quite a lot of blood ; 
and when I came he was lying in the 
road and saying bad words, till I told 
him it was naughty to say them and then 
he said he guessed that was right, and 
he got up and walked away. But he 
couldn’t walk very well and I think he 
was hurt pretty bad.” 

Grandpa listened attentively, as he 
always did when Toggles had anything 
to tell him, and then he said, half to 
himself, “ There was a man hurt there 
last fall, and one in April. It’s a bad 
hill.” 

“Couldn’t the road men make it 
level ? ’ 9 Toggles asked. He had watched 
the road men working nearly all one day 
and he knew they could greatly improve 
a bad road. 


254 


TOGGLES 


“Not very well,” answered Grandpa, 
“but there ought to be a sign at the top 
of the hill. I wonder — ” 

“I wonder — !” echoed Toggles, for it 
all of a sudden flashed through his mind 
what Grandpa was going to say. 
“But — ” he hesitated, “but would that 
be enough, Grandpa, to show how thank- 
ful we are'?” 

“It could not of course show how 
thankful we are,” said Grandpa. 
“Nothing could do that — not even the 
biggest church. But, if we made a sign, 
all by ourselves, a good large one, it 
would be a help to every person who 
passed in an auto or on a bicycle and it 
might some day save a life.” 

Toggles leaped out of the hammock. 

“All right,” he exclaimed, “we’ll do 


TEE PUBLIC BENEFACTORS 255 


it. We’ll make it out of boards and 
paint on it, ‘Notice to men on bicycles 
or people in automobiles! Be careful 
about this bill or you may get hurt!’ 
Just something short like that, in big 
letters.” 

There seemed no reason for waiting 
and so they made the board that very 
afternoon and painted it white and, 
when the paint was dry, Grandpa drew 
on it some large, black letters and Tog- 
gles painted them in. It was a splendid 
sign and the next afternoon they nailed 
it to the fence, at the top of the hill 
where every one who passed could 
read the warning : 

BANGER! GO SLOW! 


THIS IS A BAD HILL 


256 


TOGGLES 


But down at the very bottom was 
painted in small letters : 

THIS SIGN IS PUT UP BY TOGGLES 
AND HIS GRANDPA IN THANKFULNESS 
FOR THE RECOVERY FROM DANGEROUS 
ILLNESS OF SOME ONE WHOM THEY LOVE. 

When they left next day to take the 
train for home, Grandpa drove around 
by that sign. It was not as large as a 
church, it was not as beautiful as a pic- 
ture, but it stood there, firm and bright, 
giving its kindly warning of unknown 
danger. They stopped to let Mother 
take a snapshot of it with her little 
kodak. 

“And every time we see it,” mused 
Toggles, “it will remind us — ” 

But he did not say of what ; there was 
no need to say. They all knew. 


THE END 







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